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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
What Does Donald Trump’s “War from Within” Mean in Practice?
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- [00:01]
Narrator/Announcer
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- [01:53]
Evan Osnos
I was in West Virginia the other day and I was at a bookstore and let's just say the stacks of Joe Manchin's new biography looked, shall we say, undersold. It was not exactly wood chip material. It's coming to a remainder table near you.
- [02:10]
Jane Mayer
Okay, well, listen, no author, though we have to admit no author can make fun of potential wood chipping materials because we're just asking to be on the remainder sale table along with the. With those special stickers that says signed by author. Making it even more humiliating.
- [02:28]
Susan Glasser
I have to say, I thought one of the benefits was that we didn't even have to talk about Joe Manchin anymore because he did manage to hijack an awful lot of our brain space for the previous few years. I'm not sure to what end.
- [02:41]
Evan Osnos
I just wanted to bring us back to A quieter, simpler time, which is to say, you know, a year ago.
- [02:49]
Susan Glasser
Welcome to the Political scene from the New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. Susan Glosser. And I'm joined by my colleagues Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos. Hey, Jane.
- [03:00]
Jane Mayer
Hi, guys.
- [03:01]
Susan Glasser
Hey, Evan.
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Evan Osnos
Good morning, guys.
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Susan Glasser
All right, well, great to be with you once again. I'm feeling an emergency need to convene this group every single day because so much is happening. But I'm so glad we're taking on this important topic today. And that is one of the most striking and alarming features, I think, of Trump's second term, and that is the militarization of American politics. In just the past few months, in just the past few days, President Trump has deployed the national guard to Washington, D.C. he's announced that he's sending troops to, quote, war ravaged Portland and Chicago. He's even called for the imprisonment of, of Illinois Governor J.B. pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. And this is in a context in which just last week, I know it feels like a year, but it was just last week that Donald Trump, speaking to hundreds of generals and admirals at Quantico, declared, it's a war from within. We should use some of these dangerous cities, and he means American cities, American, as training grounds for our military. Donald Trump, in his second term, has reoriented the Pentagon around this new idea of national security, one that frames our greatest threats not as coming from abroad, but right here within America's own borders. It's a chilling vision of power that turns the machinery of war inward. So in this episode, what does the war within mean in practice? Is it even legal? Where is it going? And we'll be joined later by my friend Corey Shockey, author of an upcoming book, the State and the Soldier, a veteran of the Pentagon and really first rate expert who'd help us understand what's at stake when the military becomes politicized. I feel like, Jane, I need to take a deep breath. Even when recounting this week's events. It's a remarkable week in the life of a nation. And it's one that I feel like it's important to just sort of stop and take stock. Federal district judges in both Oregon and Illinois, for now, saying no.
- [05:23]
Jane Mayer
For now. Okay. I mean, I'm with you. This was just a shocking week. It's shocking, and I have to say it feels dangerous. It's not really the topic of our show today about Letitia James, but when an elected official in the other party is indicted, you're Crossing some new barriers here. And earlier in the week, as we've seen, we're crossing new barriers. And a couple judges, one in Oregon and one in Illinois, federal district judges have both called out the Trump administration and said, in essence, there's no national emergency here. There's no reason to call up the National Guard. As Judge Immerget wrote in Oregon, she said this is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law. So she called out and suspended what the Trump administration's trying to do. But will this hold? I mean, the same ruling, a very similar ruling, was made by a district court judge in Illinois, April Perry. But will this hold? We don't know yet. And what we're already hearing is it's been appealed by the Trump administration in Oregon to the ninth Circuit. And the three judge appeals court court panel, which has two judges who were appointed by Trump, appears to be skeptical of the lower court judge's position on this and seems to be leaning towards Trump. We'll see what happens. All of this, obviously, is going to end up in the lap of the Supreme Court. But meanwhile, there are troops on the streets of American cities where there is, according to reporters, who are there not an insurrection, not a national emergency, just people who are protesting and exercising their First Amendment rights and who knows, maybe being provocative here and there. But there's no sense that the local police and law enforcement people can't handle it. Yet the Trump administration has sent in troops.
- [07:20]
Evan Osnos
And I will note, Susan, just, I mean, you guys know this, but it's worth listeners remembering that Judge Immerget in Oregon is not exactly a left wing operative. This was a Trump appointee, somebody who had been appointed U.S. attorney under the George W. Bush administration, worked for Ken Starr back during the Clinton investigation. So this is somebody with bona fide conservative credentials who is standing up and saying, hold on a second, this does not fit the standards of the Constitution.
- [07:49]
Susan Glasser
Well, and Evan, to your point, her decision not only underscored the legal offense to our democratic small D system, you know, remember when Republicans were federalists. But, but she also wrote, and I think this is the really salient fact for me about what is so jarring, she also wrote, this is untethered to the facts. And you made that point. There's no insurrection, there's no rebellion. By using the language of war here and sending actual armed troops into the streets, is Donald Trump sort of looking to create the very conditions he claims already exist? I mean, what does it mean to call the cities war ravaged?
- [08:32]
Evan Osnos
It's such an important point. I'm reminded, interestingly, Susan, of something that Heg mentioned, just a brief passing comment in his speech at Quantico. You know, he invoked this classic saying, move out and draw fire, which is something he would have learned as a young officer. What does move out and draw fire means? It means you mobilize, you get moving as a unit, and then you draw fire from the other side, from the enemy, so as to find them to generate the conflict, to essentially hasten the events that you expect. In a sense, what you see happening right now is the Trump administration is moving out and drawing fire in American cities, trying to elicit the very conflict that they believe will provide the predicate on which to then take the political steps to establish a greater sense of emergency, the political architecture of emergency. And it's worth paying attention to the rhetoric and the gap between the language and the facts. I'll just draw attention to one interesting little detail. We haven't talked much about the other drama which is unfolding in parallel here, which is the United States is now using the tools of war to attack drug traffickers, boats that are believed to be coming from Venezuela, bringing drugs to the United States. There's a small detail that people have noticed, and I think it's important, which is the administration is now referring to these not as drug dealers or drug smugglers, but narco terrorists, narco terrorism. That term, the kind of universalization of terrorism is an idea here to pay very close attention to. Stephen Miller has talked about terror networks going after, as he puts it, leftist terror networks. And a network is a very dangerous idea in the sort of law around how you pursue your enemies. Because a network is by its very nature amorphous amoeba, like it can grow, it can shrink, you can define it in whatever way you want. And when you have this administration beginning to declare that it is at war, in effect, with terror networks that can go in all kinds of directions.
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Jane Mayer
I mean, if you follow up on what Stephen Miller said in a post on X this week, was that there is, quote, there is a large and growing movement of left wing terrorism in this country and it is well organized and funded and it is shielded by so called far left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general, and that the only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks. So he's actually defining some of those who are upholding the laws and our law enforcement officials in this country as being part of the terror networks. I mean, that was a pretty terrifying thing for him to be saying. And it is so amorphous it got me going back and reading Orwell on politics in the English language. And, you know, he makes the point in it that every time there's some kind of amorphous euphemism, it usually hides some kind of hideous specific truth. And when you have a war on terror, that's a metaphor, that's not actually a war on a particular crime.
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Susan Glasser
That's what's really made it real for many Americans this week is seeing the very specific nature of the campaign being carried out in Chicago. For example. What you're doing is you're using the military now, in effect, as a support network for the Trump mass deportation campaign and the ICE agents. And remember, we can talk a little bit more. This is an illegal show about the base is what are the troops actually allowed to do there, and what are they not? And one of the main things they're doing there is acting in support of federal institutions or objects. Right. And so it's the federal agents presence on the ground in these cities that is being used as the specific pretext for Trump's militarization of the political fight over basically American immigration policy. But these horrifying pictures, Jane, and, you know, a very specific campaign against immigrants, many of the them are legal immigrants who are being caught up in the dragnet. I saw a picture the other day, I'm sure you guys saw it, of a Chicago mother picking her children up at school, being dragged out of her car. She was then released, apparently. But let's talk a little bit about that. I mean, you know, there is a very concrete enemy here that Trump and Miller have used to their political benefit from the beginning of Trump's time in politics. The polls suggest that many Americans, even many Democrats, think that Donald Trump is not wrong to go after illegal immigrants in our cities or that cities haven't proven capable using that to then justify this much broader power gain. But tell me a little bit about what you think is happening with the nexus between immigration and this war, quote, unquote.
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Jane Mayer
Well, I mean, I think what we've seen is there's mission creep here. It began during the campaign, Trump saying that he was going to go after illegal immigrants who were involved in criminal activity. There's plenty of support for that. I think bipartisan support for that. Then Stephen Miller set a quota for how many arrests needed to be made in this area per day. And they've wound up having this dragnet that is bringing in mothers, picking up their kids at school, thrown to the pavement, dragged into a van, taken away, released later, evidently but this is not, I think, what people expected or support. And if you look at the polls, I think there is slippage in support for this, and there is a mission creep in. What's going on out there to Evan's point. So the enemy defined was supposedly illegal immigrant criminals. What's happened is, as it has started violating people's sense of decency, including the sense of decency of the new pope who has spoken out against this. People have rallied against it, and it's drawing the protesters who are becoming the new enemy within. And actually, the judge in President Chicago, who has stopped the Trump administration so far, said that the word she used was she was afraid. What they're doing is fueling unrest, not quelling unrest. They're fueling it and then using that as an excuse to arrest the protesters.
- [15:15]
Evan Osnos
Susan, this interesting point about the fusion of the immigration politics with the politics of militarization is something that I think actually has deeper roots. I mean, I have thought a lot about this over the last few years, that you actually can go back to the 911 period, that 911 was such a shock to our system, politically, psychologically. The first time we were hit on the US Homeland, the term which then came into widespread use since Pearl harbor, and that initiated a concept of a sort of twilight war, which then continued on for two decades. What did twilight war mean? Twilight war was the idea that it was everywhere your enemy could be visible or invisible. They weren't always on the battlefield. And you saw people, political entrepreneurs, opportunists, pick this up and use it. So remember, this is a name for blast from the past. You remember Tom Tancredo? He was a congressman who was one of the first people to start talking about immigration in this really harsh way. And one of the things that was happening was that he started talking about, he and others like him started talking about jihadists coming over the southern border from Mexico. And that was the beginning of ginning up this existential fear of immigration, rather than it just being a chronic issue to be addressed through policymaking. And I think you follow that forward and you get into a place where you now have this notion of a kind of twilight, unending conflict with no border and no battle lines that allows somebody like Trump to now run wild into new directions.
- [17:02]
Susan Glasser
Well, I think, Evan, you make an important point about even the notion of a homeland. And in fact, actually, the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is an increasingly large portion of what we see, that was actually created in response to the 911 attacks. And it brought together a whole set of different functions from the government, everything from the fema, the emergency management, to what happens with immigration and the border. And I think it's, again, it's the militarization of the concept of the homeland that you could argue is sort of the precursor event. So now to have an American cities essentially calling out the National Guard and the US Military in support of essentially a domestic maneuver. Now, the other big event this week, which really for me underscores how much the Trump presidency is about, domestically speaking, this war within. At the same time, for me, it's a week of cognitive dissonance. This is our self styled President of peace, the peacemaker, who's seeking to reduce hostilities in the Middle east, declaring that he's achieved a ceasefire in Gaza at the same time literally using the language of war about his own citizens.
- [18:25]
Evan Osnos
I think it's interesting that Trump has figured out that war as an idea is a very powerful political ingredient. And he's trying to use it as a binding agent when he talks about war abroad, saying to Americans, look, we are a nation of peace here. We are bringing peace to the Middle East. But of course, then he's using war at home to fortify his political credentials with his supporters. So he is a bit like a guy who kind of stumbled on this concept in the toy box and is now brandishing it everywhere. But I think we're fortunate that we have Cory coming on today to help us navigate what this looks like in the context of American history, too.
- [19:01]
Jane Mayer
I mean, it's the tool of every tyrant, though, right? I mean, to call up military troops at home.
- [19:11]
Susan Glasser
All right, well, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll be joined by Corey Shockey, who has a new book out on civil military relations. We will talk with her about the politicization of the military. The political science will be back in just a moment. If you've been enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and a review on the podcast platform of your choice. And while you're there, don't forget to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. America is changing, and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just.
- [19:51]
Evan Osnos
The cause of global upheaval.
- [19:53]
Susan Glasser
It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [19:59]
Jane Mayer
Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.
- [20:03]
Asma Khalid
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story.
- [20:05]
Susan Glasser
From this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:14]
Asma Khalid
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- [21:28]
Susan Glasser
We are grateful for your time, Corey. It's so great to see you. Thank you.
- [21:33]
Corey Shockey
Thank you so much for this opportunity.
- [21:36]
Susan Glasser
I have to start knowing you and your own experience working inside the Pentagon. Different times with this extraordinary moment I think in American history when peak headseth the Defense secretary calls all of America's generals from overseas, calls them all together a quantico. He gives them a pep rally. Donald Trump 72 minute rambling speech in which he basically says the enemy and the war is within. Tell us first of all sort of how you reacted to that, what your many friends in the world of the military, what they thought of this and what does it mean for our democracy.
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Corey Shockey
So the behavior of both President Trump and Secretary Hegseth was genuinely shocking and the kinds of things they were saying were an incitement to violence in our country. The notion of talking to the military about the enemy within and the importance of crushing it. He actually said most of you in this room will be involved in this mission. He told them that Washington D.C. was more violent than anything they had seen fighting in Afghanistan. It should genuinely shock Americans to have the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense trying to bring our military into such contested political space. It's genuinely dangerous. Where I think Americans can take Some solace in this spectacle, this disgraceful spectacle is the comportment of those 400 or so military leaders and non commissioned officers because they did exactly what the professionalism of being in military service requires, namely, they had a duty to show up because the commander in chief and the secretary, their civilian leadership, ordered it. And they have a duty not to participate in the politics. They played it straight down the line, just like the Joint Chiefs of Staff do at the State of the Union address. And President Trump had clearly been coached that they were not going to be cheering 18 year olds, because the first thing he said to them was, it's okay to clap. Still, none of them really did.
- [24:06]
Susan Glasser
Do you think that when the moment comes, there will be a way for them to react? I mean, you've thought a lot about this since Trump's first term. I mean, this is a group that basically is God in their DNA, to follow orders and to go where the leader takes them.
- [24:25]
Corey Shockey
So it's an integral part of American military professionalism that they follow legal orders and there's a process for determining the orders are legal. So actually, one of the most dangerous things President Trump and Secretary Hagseth have done is firing the judge advocates general of the services because they were intending to send a signal that they want more lenient legal rulings out of the military lawyers. So. So you can expect that the military will follow legal orders. You can expect they will ask their lawyers whether the orders are legal. Where I think there's a misunderstanding among the public is the mistaken belief that the American military can refuse to follow immoral orders or lawful but awful orders. And militaries work on strict chains of command and they don't have that kind of latitude. So if they get orders to deploy to Chicago, they're gonna do it until somebody tells them it's illegal.
- [25:33]
Jane Mayer
Have they replaced the jags with replacements who were more favorable to the Trump administration's point of view, as they did basically with the prosecutors in Virginia? Are you seeing the same kind of process of replacement of professionals with political cronies?
- [25:50]
Corey Shockey
I have not seen that. And the bench strength is quite deep of serious professional lawyers in the military. I mean, it was the American military in 1863 that promulgated the first laws of war to constrain the behavior of an army. And it runs really deep in the American military. You could fire the top thousand American military officers and still get reliable behavior to the rule of law. So I don't think we should be that worried about it. Besides jfk, I mean, policy follow through execution isn't really the strong suit of this civilian team in the Pentagon. So I think more we need to worry about nobody being at the helm, rather than a political partisan being at the helm in your book.
- [26:42]
Jane Mayer
One of the things I thought was an interesting point was that Trump from the start has championed people who were seen as war criminals. And he's also shown a lot of disrespect for people we think of as war heroes, whether it was John McCain or the gold Star families in the very beginning. It's a different attitude, isn't it, that he is evincing towards the military?
- [27:09]
Susan Glasser
Yes.
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Corey Shockey
I think it's actually insidious that what he's trying to do is circumvent the disciplined senior leadership and appeal for personal loyalty to the younger and the non commissioned and enlisted soldiers to try and eliminate or corrode the chain of command in ways that I think are quite dangerous.
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Evan Osnos
You've made the point in the book and in this conversation. I think something worth really important to underscore, which is the idea that in the military people will follow orders that they might dislike. That is something that is very important both for the integrity of the military, but it also raises the possibility of risk for us. In a situation like this right now, where you may have uniformed leaders who recognize the risk to the service of doing things that the president directs because the military by tradition is also very wary of politicization, they know that's a corrosive path. How do you see those two instincts, those two traditions in conflict or intention? How do they play out?
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Corey Shockey
You're exactly right that they are contradictory pressures. And the military. Part of the reason the American military is so devoted to being an inert political force is that when you have a military sized to 1/2 of 1% of the American public, they want an integral connection to the American public. They feel it's important for recruiting for retention, their ability to explain why they are doing what they're doing. But the pressure from this administration, I think there's been nothing like it since at least the constitutional crisis of 1866-68. And it's really dangerous. And there is a tendency, because the military is vis in our society, there is a tendency for people who don't like the President's policies, people like me who don't like the president's policies, wanting the military to save us from the people we elect or the people that the Senate confirms in appointments. And the military cannot save us in the American system. The solutions to these problems are civilian in Nature. It's governors suing the federal government. It's Congress acting to tighten up the Insurrection Act. Right. There are only three ways that a president of the United States should be able to use American military forces domestically. One is if he federalizes them over the objections of governors because constitutional rights are not being respected. The second is if Congress by statute, permits the president and limits the conditions. And the third is if a governor requests assistance. None of those three standards have been met by President Trump's deployment of American troops into American cities.
- [30:23]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, Kori, this is such an important point. We were talking about this before that. Of course, in a divided country, we have a divided Congress. Divided Congress isn't going to pass. Pass a law amending the Insurrection act, even though they knew that Donald Trump, even in his first term, was obsessed with the idea that he was going to invoke it, and was only stopped from doing it by the pleas of a number of senior advisers of the kind that he doesn't have anymore, including then Attorney General Bill Barr, who was the last Attorney general when he was George H.W. bush's attorney general, when the Insurrection act was invoked for the last time more than three decades ago during the Los Angeles riots. And Barr said to Trump in 2020, no, you can't do this. Same time, his then Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, and his then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs also. And so, you know, you have, as you put it, almost a perfect storm of, you know, nobody willing to stand up. So what I'm hearing from you right now is that it's, once again, if the courts don't stop this, if the courts don't save this, then. Then it's gonna move ahead. Am I right that you think that the war within is gon. Unless the Supreme Court stops it?
- [31:34]
Corey Shockey
The lower courts are already putting brakes on it. In our system of civil military relations, the penalties are political. And so I think it's actually a very heartening fact that the president is so hesitant to invoke the Insurrection act, because if he does that, his authority is almost unlimited. I mean, Harvard lawyer Jack Goldsmith always has written that the Insurrection act is a very dangerous tool because the President has such wide latitude. And yet President Trump, that would facilitate what he's trying to do and take it out of the court's hands, and yet he's wary of doing it, I think, because the reaction of the American public is that that is such an extreme reaction when there's no basis for it.
- [32:29]
Jane Mayer
Just to follow up on a sort of a process question, there's no independent say so within the Department of Defense or now the Department of War. There's no legal body within it that can say, well, actually there is no insurrection taking place. There's no way to say this is an illegal order. What constitutes illegal order then? Is it just something that violates military law?
- [32:55]
Corey Shockey
So an illegal order is something that the congressional law doesn't permit. And that's the problem with the Insurrection Act. Nobody but the President has the authority to determine that an insurrection is occurring. And the precursor, the Insurrection act is actually a series of legislation passed in the early 19th century. Before that time, when George Washington was facing the Whiskey Rebellion, a genuine insurrection, he had to have the concurrence of a Supreme Court justice that an insurrection or a rebellion was occurring. The Insurrection act removed that requirement. And so, you know, there are legal ways to limit the executive's authority in this regard. The Congress just hasn't and address them.
- [33:47]
Susan Glasser
Cory, I knew you would find a way to bring us back to George Washington, which I find both.
- [33:54]
Evan Osnos
It's encouraging and inspiring. And also it always worries me whenever we have to go all the way back to Washington to find our moral governor.
- [34:03]
Jane Mayer
Doesn't it seem like our great presidents, though Washington and Lincoln both had tremendous respect for restraint when it came to the use of the military and how it should behave. They both very much involved themselves in rules of conduct for war, didn't they?
- [34:21]
Corey Shockey
That is so such an important point. And when Washington used federalized militia to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, his restraint was really important. The first thing he did was create a negotiating commission of prominent jurists to engage the rebels. He twice issued public declarations of warning of what was coming if they didn't. And Washington's restraint actually was the important example that you can have liberty and.
- [34:55]
Evan Osnos
The rule of law just as we wind down. Cory, just a question for people who are trying to anticipate what is coming over the course of this very volatile period. What are you watching for right now? A threshold moment, A thing that would either indicate that the crisis is worsening or the crisis is easing.
- [35:13]
Corey Shockey
What.
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Evan Osnos
What are those kinds of indicators?
- [35:15]
Corey Shockey
I think the most important, I mean, that is the legal challenges that governors are bringing against the federal use of either their National Guard, National Guards of other states, or potentially the invocation of the Insurrection act that will clearly go to the Supreme Court. And if the court allows this expansion of executive authority, I think it will be very difficult to identify where any limits on the domestic use of military force exist.
- [35:49]
Jane Mayer
That is chilling.
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Susan Glasser
Well, I think, Corey, we have covered everything from the Whiskey Rebellion to the Trump war within. But we are at least grateful that you are on the case. And, you know, it's such an important conversation. We'll have you back to talk about this, I'm sure, but for now, thank you. Corey Shockey. She's both a senior fellow and the Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Her new book out later this month, which we've been talking about, is called the State and the Soldier. More relevant perhaps, than she would like. Corey, it's so great to see you. Thank you.
- [36:28]
Corey Shockey
Thank you, my friends.
- [36:29]
Evan Osnos
Corey, thank you for coming. We're smarter for having heard from you today, that's for sure.
- [36:33]
Jane Mayer
So much to learn in this area. Thanks so much.
- [36:37]
Susan Glasser
The political scene will be back in just a moment. I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial director.
- [36:51]
Evan Osnos
I'm Michael Colory, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.
- [36:55]
Corey Shockey
And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show Uncanny Valley is all about the people, power and influence influence of Silicon Valley.
- [37:04]
Susan Glasser
At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. So each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech, right?
- [37:14]
Evan Osnos
So whether we're talking about privacy, AI, social media, or a major tech figure, we will always explain the Silicon Valley forces behind these stories and how they affect you.
- [37:24]
Susan Glasser
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode. You know, once again, we're waiting for the Supreme Court. We're waiting for the Supreme Court.
- [37:46]
Evan Osnos
Boy, if that's what we're waiting for, we're on thin ice. I was really struck by her observation that the military is by in its bones. It is trained not to disregard an order even when that order is crazy. And that is a worrisome fact. It is also the bulwark of military professionalism. But that puts us into pretty perilous.
- [38:09]
Jane Mayer
Territory right now and that this insurrection act lingers in there as an unexploded grenade that would give just absolute power to Trump to use the troops. Basically what we keep hearing from people who are subject area experts is, well, actually no, there is no guardrail. It just comes back to the people and voting and maybe the Supreme Court, but there is no actual red line.
- [38:37]
Susan Glasser
Unexploded grenade indeed. Evan, this brings us back to the beginning of our conversation today. That insurrection Act, Donald Trump, it's like it must be Calling to him, it's this shiny object, this further power that he can seize. Will he go there?
- [38:51]
Evan Osnos
You know what I think though, I have to tell you, I'm reminded over and over these days of a piece of my China years, which is one of the great discoveries in the history of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989, is that the people who resisted that idea inside the government, the ones who were most worried about using military force against civilians at home was the military. It was the military leaders who worried that when you go down that path, you are beginning a process of undermining public faith and trust in the very nature of your government. Yeah, but they didn't stop it.
- [39:31]
Jane Mayer
But the problem is, I mean, it's just like, you know, Colin Powell who was in the military, was the one who warned about Baghdad. The idea you break it, you own it. The military know, they know what the dangers are. But yet what we were just hearing today is they have nothing they can say that they can't say no.
- [39:52]
Evan Osnos
You know what it comes to that.
- [39:52]
Jane Mayer
Unless it's an illegal.
- [39:54]
Evan Osnos
One of the themes that comes up in our show a lot these days, guys, is you can't rely on one of these institutions as the skeleton key that's gonna pick the lock here. You know, in the end, it's politics. It's politics. You need governors who can do it and can bring cases and can maintain the support of a large enough share of the population.
- [40:14]
Jane Mayer
I mean, and we are seeing governors standing up, speaking out with much more clarity than a couple months ago.
- [40:21]
Susan Glasser
Jane, I'm glad you brought up more governors because I thought it was notable and maybe we'll see if it's just a one off or a trend. But the Republican chairman of the Governor's association actually did put out a statement, he's the first Republican governor to do so. A conservative from Oklahoma saying that he thought that Trump's deployments of the National Guard from one state over the objections of another to Illinois, that's Texas, to Illinois, that that was not right. And again, assum Republicans traditional view of federalism and I've been surprised that more Republicans haven't spoken out. But I think it is notable. We certainly should call it out when it's happening.
- [41:05]
Jane Mayer
That's Oklahoma's governor and he is incredibly conservative. And there is one other Republican governor who's spoken out, he's not incredibly conservative, but that's the governor of Vermont, Phil Scott, who has said that calling up the National Guard this way is unconstitutional. There's one Thing I wanted to say to Susan's point about the shiny object of the Insurrection act, that must be tantalizing Trump. And I think you're right. And one of the strange dynamics that we're watching is Trump is basically using the government to reverse everything that was done, he thinks, to him. So he's going after Letitia James because she prosecuted him, going after Comey, and one by one, one, I want.
- [41:47]
Susan Glasser
Well, and also, Jane, it's also about reversing and getting to do the things that he was stopped from doing in the first term. So the January 6th insurrection by Trump supporters at the US Capitol for months before that, Donald Trump already wanted to use the Insurrection Act. So part of, you know, the difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0, which Corey spoke to as well, is the difference between. Donald Trump saw there was this power that he could use in the summer of 2020 when there were the Black Lives Matter protests across the country, and he felt that he was constrained by his own advisors from doing it. So partially what he's doing is he's getting to act on all the things that he felt stymied from doing before. And I feel like that's the thing that's really scary to me now because Corey was a critic at the time of the approach of then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, interestingly, and according to our reporting and that of Milley was absolutely worried and terrified after the 2020 election, you know, that Donald Trump was going to use the military essentially in his effort to overturn the results of the election that he lost. And there was a phrase that in my reporting I was told he would use. He would say, you know, that he was gonna. If faced with an illegal order, he was gonna go to the other Joint Chiefs and tell them, hey, boys, you know, it's time to put our. Our uniforms on and go across the river to the White House and say, you know, hey, Mr. President. And you know, that, as Corey points out, is it's not in the legal tradition of the US Military. Although you. You would hope that somebody at least would, you know, put up a vigorous dispute and a vigorous argument with Donald Trump in the Situation Room before he does something like this. But my worry, Evan, now, is just that they're not even gonna try.
- [43:41]
Jane Mayer
You know, that's basically what she said, is that they can disagree with an order. They can think it's an immoral order, or, as Evan said, a crazy order, but their job is to follow the order.
- [43:53]
Evan Osnos
That's the learning that we take from this history and it is not reassuring, but it is illuminating. That's for all.
- [44:07]
Susan Glasser
Right, well, the War within. Not an episode title we ever thought we'd have, but we are where we are. Guys, I'm very grateful at least to be talking it over with you. Thank you again. This has been the Political Scene from the New Yorker, and I'm Susan Glasser. We had research assistance today from Alex d'. Elia. Our producer is Nora Richie, mixing by Mike Kutchman. Steven Valentino is our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is Conde Nas head of Global Audio. Our theme music is by Allison Layton Brown. Thank you for listening. I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial director.
- [44:55]
Evan Osnos
I'm Michael Colory, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.
- [44:58]
Susan Glasser
And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired.
- [45:01]
Corey Shockey
And our show, Uncanny Valley is about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.
- [45:07]
Susan Glasser
And right now, Silicon Valley and Washington have never been more intertwined. So each week we get together to talk about a big story, often at the intersection of tech and politics.
- [45:17]
Corey Shockey
Right.
- [45:17]
Evan Osnos
So whether we're talking about Trump, Coin, Doge, or Elon Musk, we will always explain how these Silicon Valley Valley forces are affecting Washington and how they affect you.
- [45:28]
Susan Glasser
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.