‘A war from within’
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I am a Pentagon correspondent for The Times
This week, President Trump told hundreds of top U.S. military commanders where they should set their sights.
Not Ukraine. Not Taiwan. Not Poland, Romania, Estonia or Denmark — the NATO allies whose airspaces have recently been violated by Russian drones.
The president instead chose San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, saying “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”
He has referred to those cities — all led by Democrats and populated by people who mostly voted for his opponents — as crime-filled urban hellscapes.
“We’re going to straighten that out one by one, and this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room,” Trump told the generals and admirals he had summoned from their posts around the world. “It’s a war from within.”
In that moment, the president tapped into a fear that resonates in many places around the world: A country’s army can be turned against the people it is supposed to protect.
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