President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Defense Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of America’s top generals and admirals from around the world for what turned out to be the announcement of MAGA marching orders for the American military. It was both farcical and chilling, like much else in this administration.
The President, the Commander-in-Chief under the Constitution, told our military leaders that the “enemy from within” is the real fight he wants them to pursue. Trump defines “enemy” broadly.
“You know, the Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape. We have many cities in great shape too, by the way. I want you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump said.
Then, looking out at the senior military leaders in our country, he added ominously:
“And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within. Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can’t let these people live.”
It’s an old tactic of tyrants to take highly charged words, words that trigger fear and anger, words that can be used to justify coercion and violence, and to use them in other contexts that do not warrant that level of alarm or rage. The trick is to get ordinary people wound up to the point where they acquiesce in more violence or coercion by The Leader.
Are migrants your “enemy”?
Are the very real problems caused by the policy failures on our Southern border a “war”?
Of course not. But millions of Americans go along with Trump on these claims. Why? It’s psychology, not politics. Declaring war, hunting down enemies, fighting an existential battle—that’s a real rush for some people. They get lost in the roaring, rushing delight of hating the enemy and hunting him down—or watching ICE agents do it, masked and armed, tackling and beating and brutalizing the alien among us. In a grey world, in a mundane life, the call to war is vivid and thrilling.
Trump knows this. He has long ago fashioned a rhetorical style designed to summon his listeners to fight. He tried it with the generals and admirals, invoking George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Grover Cleveland(!) as precedents for using the armed forces against fellow Americans. He said it straight out: the military is his weapon in his war at home.
Congressman Jason Crow doesn’t mince words about any of that. Crow is a combat veteran, a former Army Ranger who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he now serves as the Representative of the people of Colorado’s Sixth Congressional District. . Crow called the show Trump and Hegseth staged at Quantico “disgusting” — seasoned commanders with a dozen or more combat tours under their belts being lectured by Pete Hegseth about beards and push-ups. And he sees precisely what Trump is doing with the military in which he served.
“Donald Trump is acting like an autocrat,” Crow told me. “Somebody who wants to be a dictator.”
That’s the heart of this conversation: the corrosive effect this is having on the military, especially on younger officers and enlisted service members learning what leadership means. Crow worries that politicizing the chain of command — purging officers for disloyalty, replacing military lawyers with Trump loyalists — is already reshaping the institution. And he’s seen what happens in countries where the line between the barracks and the ballot box is erased.
We also talked about the culture-war smokescreen. Hegseth rails against a “woke” military. Crow’s answer: nonsense. The Rangers and paratroopers he fought beside aren’t weak. And in modern warfare, America needs cyber operators, drone pilots, satellite technicians as much as it needs soldiers who can max out the pull-up bar.
From there the conversation turned to the looming government shutdown, Trump’s defiance of Congress’s power of the purse, and the real-world costs — like health care premiums about to spike for millions of families.
In the end, I asked Crow what he tells people who feel disheartened. His answer was both candid and hopeful. He’s disillusioned too — that’s why he ran for Congress. But he reminded me: democracies are not saved by institutions or paper or tradition. They are saved by people. Always. And ordinary Americans, he said, are stepping up right now.
Watch our conversation above. And join me in the comments — do you believe, as Jason Crow does, that the strength of the American people is still greater than the authoritarian drift of our politics?
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—Terry