TRUMP'S WAR AGAINST THE "ENEMY WITHIN"

On 30 September President Trump called back his military leaders from around the world to the Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Virginia and told them: “we’re under invasion from within”.   America’s cities were to be their new “training grounds”.  The “enemy within”, the constant refrain  of authoritarian States facing opposition, has become Trump’s too.  On social media, for instance, he describes the Democratic Party as a greater enemy of the United States than Russia, China or North Korea.
 
Trump has domestic plans for the US military.  But after 22 October it is going to be a lot harder to find out what they are.  Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, brought in a set of policies restricting media access to the Pentagon, banning soliciting from staff release of unauthorised information by journalists doing their job.  There was a mass walk-out: five major US television networks, even Fox News threw in the towel.  Some 60 other journalists, from the merely right-wing to the ‘loony-tunes’ variety, described by Hegseth as the “next generation of the Pentagon press corps”, replaced them.  
 
Fraught and perilous legal judgements face the USA in the next few days.  District and Circuit (Federal Appeal Court) judges are making decisions permitting or curtailing deployment of the National Guard in three Democrat and one Republican-led States: Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland and Memphis. Much hinges on a legal requirement that State Governors call for their deployment.  Trump, like Eisenhower and Kennedy with very different circumstances and intentions –  namely desegregation - has called on an 1807 Insurrection Law to justify intervention.
 
Federal judges are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.  They don’t necessarily do what Trump wants.  On 4 October, Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee to prominent Federal level judicial roles, acting as U.S. District Court Judge in Oregon, issued a temporary restraining order to keep some 200 Oregon national guard from being ‘federalized’, that is put under the President’s control and going onto Portland’s streets. The Trump administration promptly sent 200 members of the California National Guard to Oregon, and there were plans to send hundreds more from Texas. In an emergency hearing, Judge Immergut issued a second restraining order - for a shorter time – for National Guard troops from anywhere in the USA deploying to Oregon.  A court of the 3rd Circuit in Chicago came back with a similar decision supporting their local authorities.  But on 20 October a three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a majority decision, stayed Immergut’s first order saying she was in error. The lawsuits continue.
 
Trump had first declared a 30 day ‘emergency’ in August in Washington DC deploying 300 National  Guard troops onto the streets to deal with “out of control crime”.  Republican governors then sent their own National Guard to reinforce them.  In reality crime had been falling.  Some 2,500 National Guards still remain at the ready in Washington after the Emergency expired..
 
In the case of  Portland, Trump’s absurd reason was the city was ‘on fire’ and supposedly 'a war zone'.  This Goebbels-grade falsehood was partly based on Fox News  showing a small, group of demonstrators outside the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) facility on the Portland south waterfront.  This was interspersed with video clips from 2020 when Portland  actually did experience growing riots and vandalism in the streets after the murder of George Floyd.  There were also Republican videos circulating using clips from Latin American riots as disinformation.
 
There was nothing prosaic about the streets around the  Portland ICE Sunday 12 October.  Unless the local TV station's websites, KGW.com or KOIN.com were engaging in remarkably creative fake news, there was the World Naked Bike Ride happening, an annual Portland event, and quite a large collection of demonstrators dressed as frogs, bananas, and giraffes holding a costume protest party of sorts against ICE.  A war zone it was not.  In Judge Immergut’s words: "the President's determination is simply untethered to the facts." Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar who served in a number of Federal posts, and from 2020-2021 as White House senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights, spoke of an “authorised blindness to facts” so Trump “can decide there’s a war when there’s nothing but bluebirds”.
 
The background to Trump’s pressure on the US judiciary is, of course, the myth of ‘the enemy within’.  Quite brazenly and publicly, Trump has announced that certain people whom he dislikes should be prosecuted.  And they are being prosecuted:  James Comey, former head of the FBI, Letitia James, first black New York Attorney-General, John Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN and Trump’s former national security adviser.  Trump’s pick for the US 87th Attorney-General, Pam Bondi, went in person to the Eastern District of Virginia to go after Comey.  The chief Federal Prosecutor in the District, Erik Siebert, investigated the case, refrained from calling a grand jury (customary procedure) finding insufficient evidence to prosecute.  Within a couple of days he was fired and replaced by  Lindsay Halligan, an insurance/property lawyer who had been working in Trump’s legal team since November 2021. 
 
In Trump-World, if you don't like somebody, just fire them and replace them with a loyalist.  And the more responsible people that you fire, the larger is the collection of ignorant, unqualified toadies.  It is all very similar to the protection racket that the mafia traditionally ran on small businesses, pay up a ransom or else: management by fear, threats and money, or rather the withholding of the latter. .
 
There are many examples of universities, companies, law firms, and the media being leaned on.  A recent example is the case of CBS’ 60 minutes, not some online website, but a major media programme with an excellent history and reputation, providing in depth treatment of contemporary stories.  Last year before the Presidential election in November 2024, they did a piece on Kamala Harris.  Trump sued them alleging that the editing of the programme was misleading and had caused him emotional distress.  CBS was covered by the freedom of speech First Amendment, and had the case gone to court, most agreed, they would have won.  Dependent on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) giving permission for a forthcoming sale of the company, CBS settled out of court for $16 million.
 
Trump and the Republicans are relying on gerrymandering and public approval of his peace-building efforts to garner votes in the US mid-term elections.  Heather Honey was a Trump activist who promoted his story of election rigging following his dethronement after his first Presidency.  Trump made her “deputy-assistant for election integrity” at the Department of Homeland Security.  She reportedly told a group of right-wing activists in March that the President could declare a “national emergency” to effectively take control of local election administration.  Straws in the wind?
 
If the polls are going against him next year, postal voting may be banned on the grounds it was the cause of the fraudulent voting that brought Biden and the ‘lunatic left’ to power.  But the most important question is can Trump rely on the military to support him if he tears up the constitution to obtain a third term on 7 November 2028. Or will it fracture like the rest of society with dire consequences?

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