A discussion on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” Friday night spiraled into speculation that President Donald Trump could be preparing to use the U.S. military as a personal force to target Americans, following the Pentagon’s approval of the deployment of the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to the U.S. Southern Command.
The deployment is officially intended to ramp up pressure on Venezuela and combat transnational cartel activity across South America. However, host Alicia Menendez suggested the order could violate international law and represent an abuse of military power.
“Even the fact that there are officers who are having that conversation tells you about the five-alarm fire that we are in,” Menendez said, questioning the legality of the administration’s claims that they can lawfully kill suspected drug traffickers “like enemy troops” instead of arresting them.
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Guest Tom Nichols, a staff writer for The Atlantic, agreed, responding that such actions do not match American or international law. “The American president has said, ‘I can point the US military any place I want and kill anyone I want.’ That eventually is going to become a principle in the domestic use of the military,” Nichols claimed.
Nichols suggested the action is part of a “broader effort to normalize using the military for personal or political ends.”
“He is acclimating people to the notion that the military is his private army unconstrained by law, unconstrained by norms, unconstrained by American traditions,” Nichols continued. He theorized that the deployment was a distraction, adding, “Sometimes I wonder how far he’s going to go to stop the release of the Epstein files and how many distractions he’s going to throw at us.”
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Nichols concluded that the goal is to distract from the President’s “already dismal record, his record low approval ratings, his struggling with a scandal,” and to “acclimate the American public to the use of military force anywhere I deem it appropriate.” He further speculated the President might be aiming to start a war before the next election to frame opposition as “treason and unpatriotic.”
Menendez agreed with Nichols’ assessment, stating, “Tom Nichols, your brain and my brain have gone to the exact same place.”
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