Misuse of the Military
June 27, 2025 – Opinion by DEC Vice Chair Dan Lack.
The U.S. Army, originating as the Continental army to fight a tyrant king, celebrated its 250th anniversary, which ironically coincided with the 79th birthday of a draft-dodging president who wants to be king.
Trump has wanted a military parade like they have in Red Square and in Pyongyang since his first administration, when his advisors talked him out of it. Now, after firing the military’s top legal officers (Judge Advocates General), and with no adults in the Oval office to stop him, Trump decided to spend tens of millions of dollars of your tax money on a military birthday parade, and on subsequent repairs to the streets of Washington, D.C.
Trump gate a partisan speech at Fort Bragg, where the soldiers sitting behind him were chosen, according to military.com, for loyalty to him rather than to the Constitution. It was a wonderful photo op for him when they cheered his lies about Democrats and the 2020 election, but it was a sad day for our military that is supposed to be nonpolitical. They even sold Trump merchandise there. Our national security is threatened when the President exacerbates the division in the military between the MAGA extremists versus the true patriots.
Californians demonstrated on behalf of their neighbors, some of them innocent citizens, who were snatched off the streets of Los Angeles by masked federal agents. Then Trump ordered the National Guard onto the streets of Lost Angeles without consulting Governor Newsom, and after law enforcement officers had already dealt with the isolated bad actors. Trump also ordered hundreds of U.S. Marines, who are trained to eliminate overseas threats and not domestic lawbreakers, into Los Angeles. What could possibly go wrong?
Trump could have ordered the military to quell the insurrection in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, but those rioters were his supporters, whom he then pardoned shortly after taking office.
And no, despite the lies spouted by right wing conspiracy theorists, Nancy Pelosi did not present the big strong President Trump from intervening while she and her fellow lawmakers were being threatened by his MAGA insurrectionists.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revealed her true intentions while misdescribing the situation in Los Angeles: “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country…”
Our democracy is threatened when the military pledges allegiance to the President, rather than the Constitution, and soldiers are dispatched to go after his political opponents.
— Dan Lack, Ocala