President Donald Trump told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use America’s Democratic cities as “training grounds” for war, a remarkable and provocative directive he announced in a speech to top military brass on Tuesday.
“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,” the president said. “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.”
Trump didn’t frame the remark as metaphor. He went further: “And I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, national guard, but military, because we’re going into Chicago very soon,” he said. “You gotta do what you gotta do because we don’t want our people hurt as they stand by.”
The statement wasn’t a slip. It was part of a larger message in which Trump repeatedly blamed Democratic leadership for urban violence and made clear he views certain U.S. cities as the enemy within.
“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,” he warned. “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.”
That kind of blanket characterization flattens complex problems into an us-versus-them battle narrative. Declaring, bluntly, that this country is “going into Chicago very soon” is a rallying cry that will be heard by local officials, law enforcement, and residents — and not necessarily in a reassuring way.
There are real, difficult conversations to be had about public safety, crime, policing and the National Guard’s appropriate role. But turning neighborhoods into “training grounds” for the armed forces treats human communities as terrain instead of places where families live, where small businesses operate, where children go to school. The language is strikingly dehumanizing.
What’s also notable is the target audience: top military brass. Framing domestic policy as a theater of war for the military risks normalizing the use of uniformed force on American soil in ways that have constitutional and historical consequences. The U.S. has strict rules — both legal and cultural — about when and how the military can be used domestically, and for good reason.
Whatever the administration’s intentions, the optics are raw and the implications broad. Turning American neighborhoods into “training grounds” is a concept that deserves a clear, public accounting: what would it look like in practice, what legal authorities would be invoked, who would protect residents’ rights, and how would success be measured?
Let’s be clear, these aren’t empty words. Trump is planting the seed for a future where the military is used to enforce domestic political will — where dissenting regions are treated as occupied zones, and the presidency is wielded like a battlefield command.
There’s no room for nuance in a statement like “we’re going into Chicago very soon.” That’s a threat, not a policy.
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