When Donald Trump addressed an unprecedented gathering of America’s military leadership on Tuesday, he was making his most fervent supporters darkest fears come true. Promising to deploy American troops to cities around the nation in order to “straighten them out one by one,” Trump urged the assembled generals and admirals to use those locations as “training grounds” for his war against “the enemy within.” That horrifying prospect--the President’s lawless use of the U.S. military to impose martial law by force—is one long expected in the most fevered swamps of MAGA world.

They just thought the President in question would be Barack Obama.

As you may recall, it was 10 years ago that right-wing hysteria about the Pentagon’s 2015 “Jade Helm” military exercises washed over the Republican Party. That March, the Department of Defense announced Jade Helm 15, a Special Operations training exercise that would take place across several southwestern states, including Texas. But right-wing social media and its on-air amplifiers soon converted the routine training mission into something else. As the Christian Science Monitor reported at the time:

One resident of Christoval, a small Texas town of about 500 people, told The New York Times his friend had started burying his guns to hide them. Another man, a school district superintendent, described seeing low-flying military planes outside.

In Bastrop, a city east of Austin where some of the training exercises will run from July 15 to Sept. 15, fears came to a head at an April town hall meeting, where residents fired questions at a military spokesman. “Are you planning on detaining or rounding up any American citizens?” one resident blatantly asked.

But it wasn’t just the tin foil hat crowd worrying about the “looming imposition of martial law and the building of a military tunnel under Walmart.” The GOP’s best and brightest warned of sinister machinations from an Obama administration that could not be trusted. At the top of that list was still-Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard (members of which are now deployed in Washington, D.C.) to monitor the American military mission:

“During the training operation, it is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed. By monitoring the Operation on a continual basis, the State Guard will facilitate communication between my office and commanders of the Operation to ensure that adequate measures are in place to protect Texans.”

Abbott had plenty of company among GOP politicians and pundits. “I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty,” Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) cautioned, “because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don’t trust what it is saying.” After viewing a map of the exercise scenario which showed the region consisting of two “hostile” states, two “permissive” states, two leaning in either direction and a divided California, Sean Hannity of Fox News proclaimed:

“I’ve never seen a map like that, where Texas is labeled as hostile territory. I understand why people are concerned.”

Unsurprisingly, Alex Jones of InfoWars infamy assumed the worst of the war-games involving thousands of special forces troops, including Green Berets, Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, simulating combat missions. “Way worse than you realize,” Jones announced. “Military, police working together toward population control.” For his part, David French of the National Review rejected the mythmaking of the Alex Jones crowd even as he blamed President Obama for having given Republicans reason for paranoia:

No, the Obama administration isn’t going to invade Texas or Utah. Yes, there are some bottom-dwelling, opportunistic conspiracy-mongers who’ve done their best to whip up public concern. But when the Obama administration has done so much for so long to express its disdain for conservative citizens, when it has turned one of its most powerful bureaucracies — the IRS — into a weapon against domestic political opponents, and when it has stonewalled through every meaningful investigation of admitted misconduct, it has richly earned citizens’ distrust.

It should be noted that in 2017 an investigation by the Treasury Department Inspector General debunked French’s claim about the IRS, revealing that the agency scrutinized non-profit organizations both left and right. As for French, he himself later had a come-to-Jesus moment about the real threat to Americans posed by Donald Trump). As French himself fretted in January 2024:

If Donald Trump storms through Iowa and easily seizes the G.O.P. nomination, as presumed, and then goes on to win back the presidency, his victory will trigger a wild political and legal melee. The primary motivating purpose of his campaign is vengeance…If he faces protests, he may immediately invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy troops, under his command, to American cities. [Emphasis mine.]

The Insurrection Act aside for the moment, French’s prophecy has come to pass. President Trump dispatched National Guard units and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles, a deployment Federal Judge Charles Breyer ruled was in violation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act barring use of the military for law enforcement. The federalization of the Washington, DC police has not ended after the 30 day period allowed by the Home Rule Act. Meanwhile, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee ordered National Guard units, aided by federal agents to Memphis. On Tuesday, Louisiana GOP Governor Jeff Landry requested National Guard troops be sent to Baton Rouge and New Orleans, two Democratic strongholds in his red state. And over the weekend, President Trumpp promised to send his forces to supposedly “war-ravaged” Portland to end what he now calls “Chaos, Death and Destruction!” Given the plummeting crime rate in Portland and lack of arrests outside the city’s ICE facility, that deployment is neither needed nor wanted. It is also, according to the state of Oregon and the city of Portland, illegal.

But those confrontations with Democratic leaders and their residents in precisely what President Donald Trump wants. As he explained to the hundreds of his stone-faced military brass on Tuesday, Trump is waging a war against the “enemy within.”

“Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia, while America is under invasion from within. We're under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms. At least when they're wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don't have uniforms. But we are under invasion from within. We're stopping it very quickly…

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. 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.”

Just imagine: the President of the United States is declaring war against his own citizens and calling for “full force” to be used against the people and places he doesn’t like. This time, unlike a decade ago, it’s actually happening.