National Guard members who served in President Donald Trump’s long-running deployment in Washington, D.C., are speaking out about the mission — with one saying it now “embarrasses” him to have taken part.
The guard members who spent months deployed in the nation’s capital told NPR in a report published Monday that they have serious concerns about the mission, which began in August 2025 and has since become Trump’s largest and longest domestic military deployment, according to the outlet.
It has now been extended through the end of Trump’s term.
“I will say very frankly that the bad taste that this mission left in my mouth, it actually embarrasses me to be involved in any way,” one guard member told NPR.
The three spoke anonymously because they remain in the military and are prohibited from speaking publicly without authorization. Each has served for more than a decade, according to NPR.
Trump initially deployed the D.C. National Guard after declaring a “crime emergency,” despite violent crime in the city reaching a 30-year low.
“Now, with it being a year, it’s hard to feel like that justification holds any water,” one guard member said. “It feels like the guard is being exploited in a sense.”
Another described his initial reaction as “shock,” adding that the deployment “felt like a very authoritarian move that kind of felt uncharacteristic of something you would see in our country.”
The guard members also worried that using troops for long-term patrols was damaging the institution’s reputation.
“If we continue down this path,” one warned, “where this kind of ‘presence patrol’ mission becomes the new definitive image of the National Guard, it’s going to completely rebrand everything that was noble about the National Guard into being mundane at best and threatening at worst.”
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