QUANTICO, Va. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed using American cities as training grounds for the armed forces and spoke of needing U.S. military might to combat what he called the "invasion from within."
Addressing an audience of military brass abruptly summoned to Virginia, Trump outlined a muscular and at times norm-shattering view of the military's role in domestic affairs. He was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who declared an end to “woke” culture and announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.
The dual messages underscored the Trump administration's efforts not only to reshape contemporary Pentagon culture but to enlist military resources for the president's priorities and for decidedly domestic purposes, including quelling unrest and violent crime.
“We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” Trump said. He noted at another point: “We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.”
After calling hundreds of military leaders and their top advisers from around the world to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Hegseth largely focused on long-used talking points that painted a picture of a military hamstrung by “woke” policies. He said military leaders should “do the honorable thing and resign” if they don’t like his new approach.
Though meetings between military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, this gathering had fueled intense speculation about its purpose given the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it. The fact that admirals and generals from conflict zones were summoned for a lecture on race and gender in the military showed the extent to which the country’s culture wars have become a front-and-center agenda item for Hegseth’s Pentagon, even at a time of broad national security concerns across the globe.
‘We will not be politically correct’
Trump is accustomed to boisterous crowds of supporters who laugh at his jokes and applaud his boasting. But he wasn't getting that kind of soundtrack from the military leaders in attendance.
In keeping with the nonpartisan tradition of the armed services, the military leaders sat mostly stone-faced through Trump’s politicized remarks, a contrast from when rank-and-file soldiers cheered during Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg this summer.
Trump encouraged the audience at the outset of his speech to applaud as they wished. He then added, “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room — of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.” Some laughed.
Before Trump took the stage, Hegseth said in his nearly hourlong speech that the military has promoted too many leaders for the wrong reasons, based on race, gender quotas and “historic firsts.”
“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said.
That was echoed by Trump: “The purposes of America military is not to protect anyone’s feelings. It’s to protect our republic.″
″We will not be politically correct when it comes to defending American freedom,” Trump said.
Several military officials and rank-and-file troops, who all spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, said they were unsure how the remarks from Trump and Hegseth would affect their daily lives in the service. Some expressed concerns over the framing of domestic unrest as a war, while some also said they found Hegseth’s message appealing about more closely adhering to fitness standards and cutting out unnecessary training.
Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the meeting “an expensive, dangerous dereliction of leadership.”
“Even more troubling was Mr. Hegseth’s ultimatum to America’s senior officers: conform to his political worldview or step aside,” Reed said in a statement, calling it a “profoundly dangerous” demand.
Trump's u
se of the military on American soil
Trump has already tested the limits of a nearly 150-year-old federal law, the Posse Comitatus Act, that restricts the military’s role in law enforcement.
He has sent National Guard and active duty Marines to Los Angeles, threatened to do the same to combat crime and illegal immigration in other Democratic-led cities, and surged troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
National Guard members are generally exempt from the law because they're under state control. But the law does apply when they’re “federalized” and put under the president’s control, as happened in LA over the Democratic governor’s objections.
Trump said the armed forces also should focus on the Western Hemisphere, boasting about carrying out military strikes on boats in the Caribbean that he says targeted drug traffickers.
Loosening disciplinary rules
Hegseth said he's easing disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections, focusing on removing many of the guardrails the military put in place after numerous scandals and investigations.
He also said he was ordering a review of “the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”
He called for changes to "allow leaders with forgivable, earnest or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.”
“People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career,” Hegseth said.
Bullying and toxic leadership have been the suspected and confirmed causes behind numerous military suicides over the past several years, including of Brandon Caserta, a young sailor who was bullied into killing himself in 2018.
Gender-neutral physical standards
Hegseth used the platform to slam environmental policies and transgender troops. The Pentagon has been told from previous administrations that “our diversity is our strength,” Hegseth said, calling that an “insane fallacy.”
Hegseth said the military would ensure “every designated combat arms position returns to the highest male standard.” He's previously issued directives for gender-neutral physical standards, even though specific combat, special operations, infantry, armor, pararescue and other jobs already require the same standards regardless of age or gender. The military services were trying to determine next steps and what, if anything, may need to change.
Hegseth said it is not about preventing women from serving.
“If women can make it, excellent; if not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it," he said. "That is not the intent, but it could be the result.”
Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who served in the Iraq War, said Hegseth was “appropriate” in suggesting that women should be expected to meet certain standards.
“I’m not worried about that,” Ernst said. “There should be a same set of standards for combat arms."
Janessa Goldbeck, who served in the Marines and is now CEO of the Vet Voice Foundation, said Hegseth’s speech was more about “stoking grievance than strengthening the force.”
Hegseth “has a cartoonish, 1980s, comic-book idea of toughness he’s never outgrown,” she said. “Instead of focusing on what actually improves force readiness, he continues to waste time and taxpayer dollars on He-Man culture-war theatrics.”
Hegseth's speech came as the country faces a potential government shutdown this week and as he has taken several unusual and unexplained actions, including ordering cuts to the number of general officers and firings of other top military leaders.
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Finley and Toropin reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Chris Megerian, Adriana Gomez Licon, Ali Swenson and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.