If Trump orders soldiers to shoot the Americans, it seems to have a willing man

Washington – While President Donald Trump increases his use of the military to suffocate domestic dissent, he has on his side a pentagon leader, apparently ready to carry out any order that Trump gives him, possibly including a potentially illegal one to shoot US citizens.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegesh, specifically asked during his January confirmation hearing if he would have obeyed a Trump 2020 lawsuit to shoot the protesters, as Trump had wanted the then secretary Mark Esper Hagara in his first mandate, he would not answer and dodged the question.

“I was in the Washington National Guard Unit, DC that was in Lafayette Square during those events that supported a riot shield on behalf of my country. I saw 50 agents of the secret service injured by the rufflers who tried to jump on the fences, set fire to the church and destroy a statue,” he said in response to the Democratic senator of Hawaii, Mazie Hirono.

A minute later, Hegseth cited Trump’s leadership as the reason he would not provide definitive answers to that or other questions.

“One of the things in which President Trump is so good is never strategically giving his hand strategically, so never in this public forum would give in one way or another what the president who gives me in any context orders,” he said.

Hegesh’s question and answer can be suddenly relevant again after Trump’s orders to the military to protect immigration officers and the application of customs who carry out raids to arrest migrants who are in the country illegally. The protests became violent in Los Angeles during the weekend after Trump deployed 2,000 Troops from the California National Guard to the city on Saturday night.

He continued threatening to add more troops and possibly expand the deployment in the comments on Sunday after a golf weekend in his club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “We are going to have troops everywhere,” he told reporters.

On Monday, even when the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, sued Trump and Hegseth to terminate the deployment because he had not requested it, as he said that the law requires, Trump increased the situation by adding 700 Marines, a complete battalion, to the mixture.

Brendan Smialowski through Getty Images

It is not clear what, precisely, they can achieve. Federal Law prohibits them from arresting persons unless Trump invoked the insurrection law of 1807. While he has referred to protesters as “insurrectionists” several times, he has not used his authority to declare disturbances as an “insurrection” against the United States, which would suggest that the participants are trying to overthrow the national government.

“Trump is only abusing his power,” said Hirono on Monday. “At first, it is the National Guard, without reference to the governor, and now that the Marines, what is trying to demonstrate that he is the king … It is because he thinks that the rule of law does not apply to him, and I think it is a very dangerous precedent for him to do all these things. So who is to stop him?”

The spokesman of the Chief Pentagon, Sean Parnell, blamed Newsom, to whom Trump regularly calls the “news forest” in his comments and publications on social networks, for violence.

“Under the unnecessary leadership of Governor Gavin Newsom, California state and local officials have actively subverted federal immigration laws, enabled the so -called sanctuary cities and have refused to protect the federal agents of the law,” Parnell told News themezone. “Due to this leadership failure, President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have taken a step forward to protect our violent mob communities. We have the obligation to defend federal law agents, even if Gavin Newsom will not do so.”

“Donald Trump has manufactured a crisis and is inflaming conditions,” said Newsom in a publication on social networks on Sunday, and then added a separate publication, “the local police did not need help … Trump sent troops anyway, to manufacture chaos and violence.”

Trump in 2020 was angry at the protests throughout the country caused by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, and particularly those that take place in Washington, DC, near the White House.

According to Esper, Trump wanted the National Guard troops who had been deployed to open fire against protesters: “He says: ‘You can’t shoot them? Just shoot them on the legs or something like that.’

On June 1 of that year, the president of the Chiefs of General Staff and the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, were present with Trump when he ordered Lafayette Square to adjacent to the White House clear to be able to take a photo holding a Bible in front of a church there.

Both Esper and Milley apologized publicly for their presence in later days and declared that the military had no role in the elections of that fall. The comments indicated to Trump and finally led to waiting for Trump’s electoral loss in November.

It is likely that such rejection with Hegesh, a former News Weekend presenter, now in charge of the military, does not occur.

“Secretary Hegesh is firmly with President Trump and will work with our inter -institutional partners to restore the order,” said Parnell.

Igor Bobic contributed reports.