Trump sleepwalks through unhinged rant to military leaders

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he wants to use U.S. cities as training grounds for the military, a dangerous and disgraceful incitement of violence against civilians that further slides the country into an authoritarian hell hole.

The 79-year-old commander in chief made the comments in a low-energy, rambling speech that lasted over an hour to military generals who had been flown in from across the world to Quantico.  First they were lectured about ethics and war crimes by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth before being told by Trump that they will continue to be used to police civilians across the country.

"I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military," Trump said, referring to Hegseth. "Because we're going into Chicago very soon. That's a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor."

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Trump has been threatening to send the National Guard to Chicago, as he has done with Washington, , and Portland, Oregon—falsely describing the cities as war zones. Troops stationed in those cities have basically served as janitors and landscapers, picking up trash and spreading mulch because federal law prohibits them from serving as local law enforcement officers.

But Trump said he is going to continue to send the military into U.S. cities, saying that it’s necessary because America is "under invasion from within." 

“San Francisco and Chicago, New York, Los Angeles … We'll straighten them out one-by-one,” Trump said. “It will be a major part for some of the people in this room. It’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”

He went on to lament that he couldn't kill the supposed invaders—whoever they may be—because it's hard to identify them.

"They don't wear uniforms. At least when they're wearing a uniform you can take them out," Trump said, suggesting he's just fine with the military carrying out extrajudicial killings of civilians, as he’s done with military strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela.

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While he made his vile threats against civilians, Trump was super low energy, likely because the generals gathered didn't loudly applaud for him like the cultists at his rallies do.

"I never walked into a room so silent before," Trump said. "If you want to applaud, you applaud. You can do anything you want. If you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. There goes your rank and there goes your future."

From there, a low-energy Trump rambled on about God knows what, including some goobledygook about war, the quality of the paper he signs, the fact that he probably won't be given the Nobel Prize, and that you cannot  use the "n" word. Yes, seriously.

"We can't let people throw around that word. I call it the N word," Trump said, seemingly referring to the word nuclear. "There are two N words and you can't use either of them."

Democrats, such as a particular “incompetent governor” Trump called out, slammed Trump’s speech as fascist rhetoric.

“To Donald Trump: Stop using military troops and ICE to invade and disrupt American cities. Stop calling your political opponents ‘enemies’ of the US. Stop attacking the 1st Amendment. Our troops and our nation deserve better than you acting as a petty tyrant,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote in a post on X after Trump’s speech.

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