President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently convened a high-profile gathering of senior military leaders to outline the administration’s defense priorities and advocate for stringent military standards, a move critics likened to a campaign rally. The event drew scrutiny for its timing amid a government shutdown, with some military officials privately questioning Trump’s emphasis on deploying forces to address domestic unrest. The Pentagon announced plans to implement Hegseth’s proposed fitness standards by Jan. 2026, intensifying debates over the administration’s military reforms.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell defended the event, stating, “The war on warriors is over.” He added, “Political correctness has no home at the Department of War. Today’s address cements a new but familiar culture we refer to as the warrior ethos and postures the department toward a new era of peace though strength.”
During the assembly, Trump and Hegseth focused on overhauling military practices, with Hegseth calling for rigorous fitness benchmarks and criticizing diversity-focused policies.General Dan Caine praised the gathering, saying, “The event was an unprecedented opportunity and honor for the assembled senior officers and their top enlisted advisers to hear directly from the military’s civilian leadership.”
The Pentagon framed the event as advancing a “peace through strength” doctrine, explicitly rejecting “political correctness.” Democratic lawmakers condemned it as a misallocation of resources, urging greater attention to international security challenges.
Representative Pat Ryan (D-NY) voiced strong opposition, posting, “Deploying U.S. troops against U.S. citizens in American cities isn’t just Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) supported the administration’s approach, stating, “There needs to be more warfighter training.” He added, “We don’t do enough of it. We don’t do enough flying training. I like this approach … I thought it was a strong speech.”Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) supported the administration’s approach, stating, “There needs to be more warfighter training.” He added, “We don’t do enough of it. We don’t do enough flying training. I like this approach … I thought it was a strong speech.”
Tag Archives: Pentagon
Inquisitr: Conservative Rick Wilson Warns MAGA Loyalists: Trump ‘Will Be Dead Sooner Than You Imagine’
Rick Wilson issues a grim warning to Trump’s loyalists about retribution.
Rick Wilson has never been one to hold back, but his latest Substack column went even further than usual. The longtime Republican strategist and outspoken Trump critic warned the former president’s most loyal followers that their leader will not be around forever, and that those who have helped him undermine democratic norms should prepare for consequences.
The column dropped the day before Donald Trump’s scheduled “routine yearly check-up” at Walter Reed Hospital, just five months after his last visit, fueling speculation about his health. Wilson did not mince words, tying the timing to his grim prediction. “You will not reign forever,” he wrote. “Your Dear Leader will be dead sooner than you imagine, given his failing health and corroded mind.”
Wilson’s warning was not just about Trump’s mortality, but about what he called the “reckoning” awaiting his inner circle. He accused Trump’s allies, from top officials to rank and file enforcers, of enabling what he described as an assault on American liberty. “The lawful power of the people will be used to deliver decisive, agonizing consequences,” he wrote. “Legal, political, economic, and social punishments are the only warning that will work.”
In the piece, Wilson also referenced Trump adviser Stephen Miller, calling him part of an effort to inflame public tensions to justify authoritarian crackdowns. He accused the administration of trying to provoke chaos so that Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act. “Donald Trump and his claque of pissant authoritarians have switched from wanna be to gonna be,” Wilson warned, adding that they were “itching to turn the United States military into their personal palace guard.”
The post also veered into disturbing imagery, with Wilson writing that Trump loyalists “can live their remaining days in an 8×8 cell or take a blindfold, a cigarette, and a wall.” He later framed his language as about accountability, not violence, but the line sparked outrage among Trump supporters and conservative media figures, who accused him of calling for political persecution.
Still, Wilson’s followers saw the essay as a blunt reality check for a movement that has grown used to acting with impunity. He argued that Trump’s cult of personality has shielded enablers from responsibility, but that eventually, when Trump’s influence fades, justice will catch up. “Those who betrayed this nation in the service of Trump,” he wrote, “will be tried and handed punishments so severe that generations to come will remember that America is, by its very DNA, engineered to destroy tyranny.”
Wilson’s rhetoric has long been divisive, but his prediction comes as Trump’s physical and political stamina face intense scrutiny. Between reports of repeated medical visits and observations about cognitive lapses, speculation about the former president’s health continues to swirl. For Wilson, that is part of his point, the “Dear Leader,” as he calls Trump, is not immortal, and when he is gone, his allies will not have his shadow to hide behind.
Whether seen as prophetic or provocative, Wilson’s words landed with force. His message to the MAGA faithful was unmistakable: Trump’s time will eventually end, and when it does, those who followed him blindly will face the consequences.

http://inquisitr.com/conservative-rick-wilson-warns-maga-loyalists-trump-will-be-dead-sooner-than-you-imagine
We can only hope!
And it can’t happen soon enough!
UK Metro: Donald Trump’s ‘Secretary of War’ is ‘terrified and manic’ after Charlie Kirk’s death
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appears to be cracking under the increased demands of his job in the Pentagon, new reports claim.
Sources inside the Department of Defense – now rebranded as the ‘Department of War’ – say that Hegseth has become even more frenzied since Charlie Kirk’s violent death.
One source told the Daily Mail: ‘There’s a manic quality about him. Or let me rephrase, an even more manic quality, which is really saying something.’
Those close to the Secretary of War said he had begun pacing in meetings, with a source adding: ‘Dude is crawling out of his skin.’
‘He takes things personally when challenged – like full-blown tantrums,’ another said.
‘That warrior personae? He’s spooked.’
Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell called the allegations made by unnamed members of staff ‘false’.
After Kirk’s death Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer Rauchet, repeatedly pushed for more security for her husband, their family and their homes.
It’s not the first time Hegseth has faced scrutiny. He faced fury for ‘leaking war plans’ in a group chat earlier this year.
‘Nobody was texting war plans’, Hegseth said after sharing details of a military operation against Houthi rebels before and while it was in progress.
He had used the Signal messaging app to share the time, weapons and target with Donald Trump’s top security officials and – inadvertently – a journalist.
It turns out that wasn’t the only Signal group chat where Hegseth shared details of the airstrikes in Yemen. He also shared flight schedules in a chat with his wife and brother, the New York Times reported.
Trump later confirmed he had ‘confidence’ in Hegseth, his spokesperson said.
Former chief Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot, who resigned earlier this year, called for Hegseth to be sacked.
Writing for Politico, he claimed the Department of Defense was ‘in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership’.
‘It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon’, he said.
‘From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership.’

The Hill: Hegseth’s ultimatum to generals sparks fears of departures
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “my way or the highway” message to hundreds of generals and admirals at a summit in Virginia last week has sparked fears that some top leaders may choose to bow out of the U.S. military entirely.
The departure of two senior leaders last week stoked those worries, though the Pentagon says they were unrelated to Hegseth’s ultimatum.
“His speech directly attacked the values of many of the senior officers and enlisted members in the audience, and I would expect many of them to demonstrate their disgust by retiring,” Don Christensen, a retired Air Force colonel and former military lawyer who watched the speech, said of Hegseth.
The two senior military leaders to leave were Gen. Thomas Bussiere, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command, and Gen. Bryan Fenton, head of U.S. Special Operations Command based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.
Bussiere, who was appointed by President Trump, was previously nominated to serve as the Air Force’s vice chief of staff in August, but his nomination was pulled just weeks later.
In his retirement announcement, posted to Facebook on Tuesday, he cited “personal and family reasons” as the main driver for his departure, noting he had made the “difficult” decision after much reflection.
Fenton’s retirement came after three years in the role. “FWIW, Gen. Fenton was planning on retiring, it was not tied to SecWar’s speech,” Kristina Wong, an adviser to Hegseth, wrote last week on the social platform X.
The high-profile exits came just hours after Hegseth’s speech to hundreds of top admirals and generals in Quantico, Va., in which he outlined his vision of a military void of “woke garbage,” proposing less restrictive rules of engagement and fewer waivers that allow troops to have a beard. He also declared he would curtail whistleblower and inspector general functions, change how the military handles allegations of hazing and other types of abuse, and allow drill sergeants to “put their hands on recruits.”
“If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign,” Hegseth told the mostly stoic audience.
The comments prompted The New York Times to run an unusual headline last week, in which it invited senior military leaders to speak to the outlet should they indeed decide to resign.
Some Democrats are urging military leaders who disagree with Hegseth to stay where they are.
“If the challenge was ‘get out,’ then I would say to those generals, ‘stay put,’” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), an Air Force veteran, said on CNN last week. “Because we need you. We need you and your experience to counter the message of Mr. Hegseth and frankly the president himself.”
Hegseth also promised to continue firing top brass who did not align with his vision. And Friday, he announced the ouster of Jon Harrison, the chief of staff of the secretary of the Navy, who was an appointee during the first Trump administration.
“As you have seen and the media has obsessed over, I have fired a number of senior officers since taking over,” Hegseth said in his Tuesday speech. “The rationale, for me, has been straightforward: It’s nearly impossible to change a culture with the same people who helped create or even benefited from that culture, even if that culture was created by a previous president and previous secretary.”
Carrie Lee, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund, said she would not be surprised to see other retirement announcements following Hegseth’s pointed words.
“Even though [Bussiere’s] nomination for vice chief of staff of the Air Force had been pulled and his successor had been announced — there wasn’t anywhere else for him to really go, right, career-wise — but the fact that the announcement dropped kind of the night of Hegseth’s speech, I think that’s probably not a coincidence,” Lee told The Hill.
“I would not be surprised to see retirements,” she added. “This is already happening at the more kind of lower senior to kind of upper, mid-grade level. So thinking about colonels and one-stars and two-stars, folks who are refusing assignments, choosing to retire rather than stay in the force, making kind of very personal decisions with their families about whether this is an institution that reflects their values or not.”
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank, said he doubts there will be a mass exodus, but he does sense a “widespread anxiety” among those in the armed forces.
“When I talk to military officers, they have a range of views. Most of them don’t want to pick public fights with Trump. Most of them are not at the point of considering resignation. Some of them even like certain aspects of the administration,” he told The Hill. “You put it all together, there are very few people who are indifferent to these kinds of dramatic events, these kinds of changes.”
He added that he believes there are very few people who are getting ready to resign, “but there are a lot of people who are somewhere between nervous and anxious about where the all-volunteer force is headed, where the country is headed, and for the most part, they’re just trying to roll with the punches and do their jobs as long as they’re not being asked to violate the law or their oath.”
Lee pointed out that in declining to use his speech to focus on several pressing issues within the military, including steadily rising suicide rates among service members and persistent sexual assault rates, and instead harping on the Pentagon’s process for handling complaints and accusations, Hegseth likely alienated his top leaders.
“The Army has been dealing with very high suicide rates. It’s been dealing with a sexual assault crisis. It’s been dealing with a lot of people issues. And so they have made some very necessary, in my opinion, changes to the organization and to organizational culture that it sounds like Hegseth really wants to roll back,” she said.
“For many of the officers who are responsible for formations of troops and watched the suicide epidemic really ravage their units, and watched sexual assault tear units apart … to then be told that ‘we don’t care about that anymore,’ when the Army is really a people organization, it doesn’t surprise me that there’s a lot of folks who aren’t going to stick around for that.”
Bussiere’s retirement announcement also follows that of the Air Force’s chief of staff, Gen. David Allvin, who in August said he would retire in November after serving two years of his four-year term. Though Bussiere did not mention Hegseth’s speech in his resignation note, he suggested he would find other ways to support the U.S. military after he leaves.
“While I’m stepping away from active duty, my commitment to service remains. I look forward to finding new ways to support our Air Force, our national defense and the incredible people who make it all possible,” he wrote.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5541871-defense-secretary-hegseth-resignation-fears
SFGATE: Pete Hegseth is f—king embarrassing
SFGATE columnist Drew Magary on America’s secretary of war
Pete Hegseth! Remember that guy? Former Fox News weirdo? Famous for drinking on the job? Accused of sexual assault before paying a settlement to make that lawsuit go away? Tapped to head the Department of Defense and then accidentally texted his war plans to the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic? Oh yes, I think you’re quite familiar with Hegseth. He’s a real asshole! And an embarrassing one, too!
Well, guess what? The leaders of our armed forces also got to know this brave, pickled s—t for brains. In case you’ve stopped reading the news because it makes you want to seek out the sturdiest rafter in your basement, President Donald Trump and Hegseth summoned the top brass of the American military to Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday for an all-hands meeting. This would be a super cool idea in, say, a “Mission: Impossible” movie. In real life, it’s a conference call that could have been an email. S—t, Hegseth is already a veteran of blasting out group messages for doing war. But using secure channels to issue directives means that Hegseth wouldn’t get to be seen issuing them. And in Donald Trump’s government, being seen is all that matters. So let’s see Hegseth rallying the troops on Tuesday and feel inspired!
Yes, the man in charge of our newly rechristened Department of War really took the stage in front of a bunch of seasoned, professional, high-ranking officers and proceeded to go epic bacon mode. Here’s the showstopper line from that clip:
“Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies, FAFO. If necessary, our troops can translate that for you.”
(sigh) It stands for “F—k around and find out.” What a powerful message to send. Because until Trump took office, we all know that other countries were like, “You know, the Americans seem pretty chill. I bet they’d never violently overreact to any perceived slight!”
I wish that this were the only cringe-worthy thing that Hegseth said to the crowd on Tuesday. But this is 2025, where wishes are zip-tied and forcefully deported to El Salvador. So Hegseth took the opportunity to deliver a full speech of cringe to our troops; a sort of “F—k you for your service” message that surely left all of the men and women in that room confident that their new boss totally knows what he’s doing. With that in mind, I collected a few more choice passages from Hegseth’s address for your perusal so that you and I can say “F—k you” right back to him. Let’s hear more!
“You see, this urgent moment of course requires more troops, more munitions, more drones, more Patriots, more submarines, more B-21 bombers. It requires more innovation, more AI in everything and ahead of the curve, more cyber effects, more counter UAS, more space, more speed.”
Just last month, Congress passed a funding bill for Hegseth’s department that clocked in at nearly $900 billion, a record high. I think that number allows for all the munitions, drones and robot sharks our military could possibly need. Then again, shouldn’t there be more AI in there, so that a drone pilot can take a pee-pee break while WarGPT detects and neutralizes a threat coming from Afgharistad?
“Our warfighters are entitled to be led by the best and most capable leaders.”
Does that mean you’re resigning? Because that would probably do the trick.
“That is who we need you all to be. Even then, in combat, even if you do everything right, you may still lose people because the enemy always gets a vote.”
Just in case you were thrown by the vagueness here, “the enemy” in question is a gay voter.
“The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things. … You might say we’re ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.”
He did. Pete Hegseth wrote that book. Stick around after having your job threatened and he’ll sign YOUR copy! And you should stick around, because for far too long, this country has been far too hostile to its “warfighters.” Why just this past weekend, I watched NFL league officials burn a flag before kickoff between the Packers and Cowboys, and then kick every member of the color guard square in the crotch! Disgusting!
“For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts.”
I can’t believe we promoted BLACKS to higher ranks. Did Jackie Robinson really die for this?
“We became the woke department.”
So true. Remember when they painted the Pentagon rainbow colors for Pride month?
“This administration has done a great deal from day one to remove the social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department, to rip out the politics.”
How’d you do it, Pete?
“No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses.”
Oh thank God. No more trans in uniform! That’s diluting our killforce with politics! You can’t hunt down Osama bin Laden using a gender-neutral latrine!
“No more climate change worship.”
Finally, I can stop worshipping the false idol that is the only inhabitable planet in the known universe. Earth: What it is good for?
“No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that s—t.”
OMG HE SWORE! This guy isn’t some namby-pamby sissy boy! He’s like Axl Rose!
“The new War Department golden rule is this: do unto your unit as you would have done unto your own child’s unit. Would you want him serving with fat or unfit or under trained troops or alongside people who can’t meet basic standards, or in a unit where standards were lowered so certain types of troops could make it in, in a unit where leaders were promoted for reasons other than merit, performance and warfighting? The answer is not just no, it’s hell no.”
When I was in middle school, I had a T-shirt that said HELL NO TO FAT CHICKS. So I’m glad to see Secretary Pete is fully aligned with my values. And he’s not done taking it to our fattest service members! Give ’em hell, sir!
“It all starts with physical fitness and appearance. If the secretary of war can do regular hard PT, so can every member of our joint force. Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.”
This part makes perfect sense when you remember that President Lard wants everyone working for him to be hot enough to appear on television. If you’re a general in our army, and you’re not on an aggressive HGH regimen, or you’re unable to rock a pair of stiletto heels that makes Rupert Murdoch harder than an AP exam, you’re OUT.
“Also today, at my direction, every warrior across our joint force is required to do PT every duty day. It should be common sense, and most units do that already, but we’re codifying it. And we’re not talking, like, hot yoga and stretching.”
We’re not talking about QUEER physical training. And if you ask for avocado toast at the mess hall, that’s five months in the brig.
“This also means grooming standards. No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression. We’re going to cut our hair, shave our beards, and adhere to standards.”
Has this idiot met the vice president? Because JD Vance has a beard for FM radio.
“Because it’s like the broken windows theory in policing. It’s like you let the small stuff go, the big stuff eventually goes, so you have to address the small stuff.”
The broken windows theory was discredited many years ago and served largely as a template for then-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani to send turnstile jumpers directly to the electric chair.
“This is on duty, in the field and in the rear. If you want a beard, you can join Special Forces. If not, then shave. No more beardos. … The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.”
Damn, he hit JD with the “beardo” tag. No coming back from that. Anyway, I appreciate the War Department instituting a no facial hair policy right after the New York Yankees abandoned theirs (the Yankees stranded three runners in the bottom of the ninth Tuesday night and lost 3-1 to the hated Boston Red Sox).
“The definition of toxic has been turned upside down, and we’re correcting that. … We’re talking about words like bullying and hazing and toxic.”
The war on hazing is over! And just to make certain that bullies and hazers can flourish in the new Department of War, Hegseth and his boss are making it easier for enlistees to squeal on their commanding officers if those officers go toxic (woke)! Just like in the good old days! In fact, Hegseth now has a process for determining if you’re sufficiently old-school, and it’s rooted in hard science!
“Here are two basic frameworks I urge you to pursue in this process … the 1990 test and the E-6 test. The 1990 test is simple. What were the military standards in 1990? And if they have changed, tell me why.”
Because it’s 35 years later? Because American morale in 1990 was so low that Kurt Cobain was able to turn that ennui into culture-altering music?
“Was it a necessary change based on the evolving landscape of combat, or was the change due to a softening, weakening or gender-based pursuit of other priorities? 1990 seems to be as good a place to start as any.”
Here’s a random year that Pete drew out of a hat. BE MORE LIKE THIS YEAR. LISTEN TO MORE TRIXTER.
“Of course, being a racist has been illegal in our formation since 1948. The same goes for sexual harassment. Both are wrong and illegal. Those kinds of infractions will be ruthlessly enforced.”
BUT …?!
“But telling someone to shave or get a haircut or to get in shape or to fix their uniform or to show up on time, to work hard, that’s exactly the kind of discrimination we want.”
We will NOT tolerate discrimination in our ranks. Unless you’re fat, or weak, or gay, or trans, or a woman reporting sexual assault, or you have that sort of dirtbag goatee that every liquor store clerk has.
“We know mistakes will be made. It’s the nature of leadership.”
Like when you texted war plans to the Atlantic, yeah?
“But you should not pay for earnest mistakes for your entire career. And that’s why today, at my direction, we’re making changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable earnest or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.”
All of you are entitled to violate a maximum three of your subordinates with a broomstick. If you need these violations to wage war properly, so be it.
“An entire generation of generals and admirals were told that they must parrot the insane fallacy that ‘our diversity is our strength.’ … They were told females and males are the same thing, or that males who think they’re females is totally normal. They were told that we need a green fleet and electric tanks. They were told to kick out Americans who refused an emergency vaccine.”
I will NOT stand here and let the department of woke discriminate against any soldier willing to infect his entire platoon with smallpox!
“We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”
This was always the goal of conservatives decrying political correctness and wokeness. They didn’t just want license to treat nonwhite, non-hetero, non-males like garbage. They wanted license to abuse and to kill them should those people ever dare to pilot a boat. This ambition was clear during Trump’s first administration, when he pardoned former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who used his position as a sniper to gun down innocent Iraqis at random, Amon Goeth-style. SecWar Pete would now like all of our troops to Be Like Eddie. So don’t let the wokescolds tell you that killing is “wrong.” God, those people are such tight-asses!
“Today is another liberation day, the liberation of America’s warriors, in name, in deed and in authorities. You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.”
I know I feel better when the man tasked with supervising the most lethal military in world history addresses his charges like they’re the prisoners from “Con Air.” Like Trump, Hegseth delivers this speech as if he’s starring in his own biopic. You can hear him waiting for a standing ovation that never comes, and it’s pathetic. This meeting served only the secretary’s whiskey-addled daydreams, and not a single active member of our armed forces. Many of the quotes you read above will be etched in stone one day, on a monument that will be torn down by a joyous protest mob.
This has been a deeply embarrassing time to be an American, and somehow Pete Hegseth has made that embarrassment even more pronounced. I bet all of the men and women and gender-fluid people (I’m woke, deal with it) in that room on Tuesday were also embarrassed. These people enlisted out of love for their country, and to do something valuable with their lives. Now they have to take orders from a narcissistic lunatic who wants them to cut weight so they can kill and pillage more efficiently. It’s disgraceful. It’s also just so, so uncomfortable. I wanna bury myself alive when I read all of this dogs—t.
At least Hegseth, toward the end of his speech, gave those same hardworking Americans an out:
“If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign. We would thank you for your service.”
That’s actually a threat, because this administration knows only how to speak in threats. But you know what? I say you folks should call the man’s bluff. Please, all of you, resign. Quit your jobs. Don’t work another second for this corrupt department. Pete Hegseth spent all of Tuesday f—king around with our service members. Time for him to find out.
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/pete-hegseth-is-embarrassing-21078716.php
CNN: Trump claims he can do anything he wants with the military. Here’s what the law says
Having rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the president is going on offense with the US military.
Donald Trump has foisted National Guard troops on Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. Other cities are on edge, particularly after he posted an apparently artificially generated image of himself dressed up like Robert Duvall’s surfing cavalry commander in “Apocalypse Now,” a meme that seemed to suggest he was threatening war on the city of Chicago.
Trump later clarified that the US would not go to war on Chicago, but he’s clearly comfortable joking about it. And he’s of the opinion his authority over the military is absolute.
“Not that I don’t have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States,” he said at a Cabinet meeting in August, when he was asked about the prospect of Chicagoans engaging in nonviolent resistance against the US military.
He’s reorienting the US military to focus on drug traffickers as terrorists and told Congress to expect more military strikes after the US destroyed a boat in the Caribbean last week.
All of this projects the kind of strongman decisiveness Trump admires.
A lot of it might also be illegal.
A ‘violation of the Posse Comitatus Act’
US District Judge Charles Breyer ruled this month that Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth committed a “a serious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act” when they deployed federalized troops to Los Angeles over the objections of the state’s governor and mayor.
The Posse Comitatus Act was passed by Congress in 1878 as Southern states worked to oust federal troops and end Reconstruction. Questions over how and whether troops can be used to enforce laws goes back to the pre-Civil War period, when federal marshals sought help from citizens and militiamen in recovering fugitive slaves and putting down the protests of abolitionists, according to the Congressional Research Service.
It is not clear why Trump has not yet, as he has promised, called up the National Guard to patrol in Chicago, but he may be waiting for the Supreme Court, which has been extremely deferential to his claims of authority, to weigh in on a preliminary basis.
Trump has more authority to deploy the military inside Washington, DC, which the Constitution says Congress controls. But Congress has ceded some authority to locally elected officials in recent decades. DC’s Attorney General Brian Schwalb has sued the Trump administration over the deployment.
Testing the War Powers Act
Trump’s strike on a boat in the Caribbean is also on murky legal ground.
After Vietnam, Congress overrode Richard Nixon’s veto to pass another law, the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires presidents to notify Congress within 48 hours of a military strike. And Trump did do that, at least his third such notification since taking office in January. Trump also sent notifications to Congress about his strike against an Iranian nuclear facility and Houthi rebels who were attacking shipping routes.
The Reiss Center at New York University maintains a database of War Powers Act notifications going back to the 1970s.
Cartels as terrorist organizations
In the notification about the Caribbean strike, Trump’s administration argued that it has declared drug cartels are terrorist organizations and that he operated within his constitutional authority to protect the country when he ordered the strike.
Strikes against terrorists have been authorized under the catchall vote that authorized the use of military force against Islamic terrorists after the 9/11 terror attacks.
But Congress, which the Constitution puts in charge of declaring war, has not authorized the use of military force against Venezuelan drug cartels.
Lack of explanation from the White House
Over the weekend, CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen reported that the Pentagon abruptly canceled classified briefings to key House and Senate committees with oversight of the military, which means lawmaker have been unable to get the legal justification for the strike.
Many Americans might celebrate the idea of a military strike to take out drug dealers, and the administration is clearly primed to lean on the idea that the cartels are terrorists.
Here’s a key quote from CNN’s report:
“The strike was the obvious result of designating them a terrorist organization,” said one person familiar with the Pentagon’s thinking. “If there was a boat full of al Qaeda fighters smuggling explosives towards the US, would anyone even ask this question?”
Few details
It’s not yet clear which military unit was responsible for the strike, what intelligence suggested there were drugs onboard, who was on the boat or what the boat was carrying.
“The attack on the smuggling vessel in the Caribbean was so extraordinary because there was no reported attempt to stop the boat or detain its crew,” wrote Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal advisor now at International Crisis Group for the website Just Security. “Instead, the use of lethal force was used in the first resort.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US could have interdicted the boat and made a legal case against those onboard, but it decided instead to blow up the boat. The notice to Congress makes clear the administration will continue with other strikes.
War crime? Vance doesn’t ‘give a sh*t’
“The decision to blow up the boat and kill everyone onboard when interdiction and detention was a clearly available option is manifestly illegal and immoral,” Oona Hathaway, a law professor and director of the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School, told me in an email.
The view of the administration could be best summarized by Vice President JD Vance stating that using the military to go after cartels is “the highest and best use of our military.”
When a user on X replied that the extrajudicial killing of civilians without presenting evidence is, by definition, a war crime, Vance, himself a Yale-educated lawyer, said this:
“I don’t give a sh*t what you call it.”
That’s not an acceptable response even for some Republicans.
“Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” wrote Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky in his own post on X. “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation?? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”
Congress has power it likely won’t use
Congress has the power to stop Trump’s campaign against boats in the Caribbean. The War Powers Act allows lawmakers in the House and Senate to demand the president seek approval before continuing a campaign longer than 60 days. But that seems unlikely to occur at the moment.
After the strike against Iran earlier this year, Paul was the only Republican senator to side with Democrats and demand Trump seek approval for any future Iran strikes.
During his first term, seven Republicans voted with Senate Democrats to hem in Trump’s ability to strike against Iran after he ordered the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. But there were not enough votes to overcome Trump’s veto that year.
Trump’s authority to use military force without congressional approval of the Caribbean operation technically expires after 60 days after he reports on the use of force, although he can extend it by an additional 30 days, although he could also declare a new operation is underway.
The use of these kinds of tactics has likely been in the works for some time.
In February, Trump designated drug cartels, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as foreign terror organizations. In April, CNN reported the CIA was reviewing whether it had authority to use lethal force against drug cartels.
But the military strike against the alleged cartel boat happened as part of a broader campaign against Venezuela, including positioning US ships, aircraft and a submarine in the Caribbean, according to a CNN report.
Trump may have campaigned as a president who would end wars, but he’s governing like a president who is very comfortable using his military.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/10/politics/venezuela-trump-military-strike-war-powers-explainer
Wall Street Journal: Did a Boat Strike in Caribbean Exceed Trump’s Authority to Use Military Force?
President Trump was operating within his constitutional powers as commander in chief when he ordered the U.S. military to destroy a vessel in the Caribbean, administration officials said, describing the drugs it was allegedly smuggling as an imminent national security threat.
But that claim was sharply disputed by legal experts and some lawmakers, who said that Trump exceeded his legal authority by using lethal military force against a target that posed no direct danger to the U.S. and doing so without congressional authorization.
The disagreement since Trump announced the deadly attack Tuesday underscored how much of a departure it represents from decades of U.S. counternarcotics operations—and raised questions about whether drug smugglers can be treated as legitimate military targets.
“Every boatload of any form of drug that poisons the American people is an imminent threat. And at the DOD, our job is to defeat imminent threats,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Thursday during a visit to an Army base in Georgia. “A drug cartel is no different than al Qaeda, and they will be treated as such.”
Trump administration officials said Tuesday’s strike, which killed 11 people on the boat, was just the opening salvo in an expanded campaign to dismantle the drug cartels they say pose a major threat to Americans.
But in importing tactics from the post-9/11 war against terrorist groups to use against drug cartels, some former officials said, Trump is trampling on longstanding limits on presidential use of force and asserting legal authorities that don’t exist.
The casualties “weren’t engaged in anything like a direct attack on the United States” and weren’t afforded a trial to determine their guilt, said Frank Kendall, who served as the secretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration and holds a law degree. “Frankly, I can’t see how this can be considered anything other than a nonjudicial killing outside the boundaries of domestic and international law.”
Unlike the interdictions which are usually conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard, the strike was carried out without warning shots, and no effort was made to detain the ship, apprehend its crew, or confirm the drugs on board. “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders they blew it up,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Mexico City on Wednesday.
Trump said U.S. forces “positively identified” the crew before the attack as members of Venezuelan crime syndicate Tren de Aragua, calling them “narcoterrorists.” Tren de Aragua is among the Latin American cartels and gangs that Trump has designated as foreign terrorist organizations since February.
The White House has provided no further information on the operation against the boat or detailed the legal arguments that it claims support it. Nor have officials disclosed where the strike took place, the identities of the casualties or the weapons used.
Some Trump administration officials suggest that by designating the drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, the Pentagon has the leeway to treat the groups as it would foreign terrorists. As commander in chief, Trump has the power to order military action against imminent threats without congressional authorization, they said.
The strike “was taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, adding that the strike occurred in international waters and “was fully consistent with the law of armed conflict.”
But Geoffrey Corn, a retired lieutenant colonel who was the Army’s senior adviser on the law of war, said: “I don’t think there is any way to legitimately characterize a drug ship heading from Venezuela, arguably to Trinidad, as an actual or imminent armed attack against the United States, justifying this military response.”
Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech University, noted that critics have condemned U.S. drone strikes since 2001 against militants in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries as extrajudicial killings, but those strikes were legitimate, he said, because the U.S. was engaged in an armed conflict under the laws of war against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is now at the International Crisis Group, said that designation of drug cartels as terrorist groups doesn’t authorize the use of military force against them. Rather it enables the U.S. to levy sanctions and pursue criminal prosecutions against individuals who support the groups.
Nor can military action be justified under the law Congress passed authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda and related terrorist groups following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, experts said.
For the military to use force, “there needs to be a legitimate claim of self-defense in international waters, an action that is necessary and proportional in response to an armed attack or imminent armed attack,” said Juan Gonzalez, who served as the National Security Council’s senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs during the Biden administration. “That clearly didn’t happen.”
The attack was the U.S. military’s first publicly acknowledged airstrike in Central or South America since the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. The White House released a grainy black-and-white video that showed the destruction of a small boat, which it celebrated as a blunt warning for drug traffickers throughout the region.
Trump administration officials have offered conflicting accounts of the episode. On Tuesday, Rubio said the drugs the vessel was carrying “were probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean” and could “contribute to the instability these countries are facing,” differing from Trump’s statement that the vessel was “heading to the United States.” On Wednesday, Rubio suggested that the shipment was “eventually” headed to the U.S.
No state in the region has publicly appealed for the U.S. to take military action against the cartels as an act of collective self-defense, Corn said.
On Thursday, two Venezuelan F-16 jet fighters flew near one of the U.S. Navy warships that have been positioned near the county. The Pentagon criticized the apparent show of force as a “highly provocative move” and warned Venezuela not to interfere with its “counter narco-terror operations.”
In the past, some U.S. counternarcotics strikes have ended in tragedy. In 2001, Peruvian and U.S. counterdrug agents mistook a small plane carrying American missionaries over the Peruvian Amazon as belonging to drug traffickers. The Peruvian Air Force shot down the plane, killing a 35-year-old woman and her infant daughter.
The U.S. has limited intelligence on small drug boats leaving Venezuela, from which the Drug Enforcement Administration was expelled in 2005 under then-President Hugo Chávez, said Mike Vigil, a former DEA director of international operations.
“The United States doesn’t really have the capability to develop good intelligence about these embarkations,” he said. “You don’t just send a missile and destroy a boat. It is the equivalent of a police officer walking up to a drug trafficker on the street and shooting him.”
In Quito, Ecuador, on Thursday, Rubio announced the designation of two more criminal groups—the Ecuadorean Los Choneros and Los Lobos—as foreign terrorist organizations. He said U.S. partners in the region would participate in operations to use lethal force against drug cartels.
A senior Mexican naval officer with decades of service and experience boarding drug vessels said actions like the one taken Tuesday by the U.S. would never be allowed by its Mexican counterpart, which has been trained in interdiction procedures by the U.S. Coast Guard.
“There is never a direct attack unless you are attacked,” he said. “As commander of the ship, I would get into serious trouble. I could be accused of murder.”
Associated Press: In one DC neighborhood after federal intervention, the notion of more authority is a mixed bag
There might be military units patrolling Union Station and public spaces where tourists often come, she said, but “none of them over here. They are armed — on the Mall. Ain’t nobody doing nothing on the Mall. It’s for show.”
In a swath of the nation’s capital that sits across the tracks, and the river, residents can see the Washington Monument, the Waldorf Astoria — formerly the Trump Hotel — and the U.S. Capitol dome.
What the people of Anacostia cannot see are the National Guard units patrolling those areas. And they don’t see them patrolling on this side of the Anacostia River, either.
In this storied region of Washington, home to Frederick Douglass, the crime that President Donald Trump has mobilized federal law enforcement to address is something residents would like to see more resources dedicated to. But it’s complicated.
“We do need protection here,” said Mable Carter, 82. “I have to come down on the bus. It’s horrifying.”
There might be military units patrolling Union Station and public spaces where tourists often come, she said, but “none of them over here. They are armed — on the Mall. Ain’t nobody doing nothing on the Mall. It’s for show.”
Carter wants to see more police in this area — the city’s own police, under the direction of Chief Pamela Smith. “I’d rather see them give her a chance. She has the structure in place.”
The Pentagon, when asked if there were plans to deploy the National Guard to higher crime areas like Anacostia and who determines that, sent a list of stations where the military units were present as of late last month. None of those deployments included stations east of the Anacostia River.
In response to a question of whether those deployments had been extended, or whether there were plans to do so White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said that federal law enforcement members have been working the wards east of the river, including involvement in the arrests of several suspects wanted for violent crimes, including a first-degree murder warrant.
“As we have said since the beginning of the operation, National Guard troops are not making arrests at this time, but federal law enforcement officers will continue getting criminals off the streets and making the communities safer,” Rogers said.
A neighborhood caught in the middle
Over the course of two weekends east of the river, in conversations with groups and individuals, including a senior’s gathering at Union Temple Baptist Church, a theme emerged.
Like Carter, people would like more law enforcement resources, but they distrust the motives behind the surge and how it has usurped the authority of the mayor and local officers. And while they acknowledge crime is more serious here than most other areas of the district, it is nowhere near the levels of three decades ago, when the D.C. National Guard worked with the Metropolitan Police to address the violence.
This year’s homicides in the district, as of Friday, were at 104, a 17% decrease from 126 as of Sept. 5 last year. But, more than 60% of them are in the two wards that are almost exclusively east of the Anacostia River, including 38 in Ward 8, according to the Metropolitan Police Department crime mapping tool. That proportion is about the same as it was in 2024 when there were 187 homicides citywide for the year. One of the most notable murders was a double homicide that left two teens lying dead on the street and a third man wounded.
“I just called the police the other night,” said Henny, 42, who owns NAM’s Market.
He said a group of teenagers attempted to rob his store after casing it throughout the day. He called police and said they asked him if they were armed. “I didn’t see a weapon,” he said, adding that no patrol officers responded.
The store owner said he has been here about 10 years and been victimized multiple times but thinks it is getting worse now. He does not give his last name out of fear.
“What worries me is to make sure they’re not coming back,” he said. “There are a lot of things going on.” Asked if he feels safe he said, “Absolutely not.”
He has pepper spray but has been told by authorities not to use it, he said. When he heard of the federal law enforcement and National Guard arrival, “To be honest, I said that’s good — but that’s not over here. It’s getting worse. The city says crime is down but I don’t see it.”
‘The rampage with guns is nothing new’
A block away, Rosie Hyde’s perspective is different. The ashes of one of the 75-year-old widow’s sons are spread around her property. Samuel Johnson was killed about three miles away on April 20, 1991. The case is still open.
Hyde, a retired probation officer for the city, said her son died during that epidemic of gun violence. “That was 35 years ago,” she said. “That tells you the rampage with guns is nothing new.”
Homicides topped 400 annually in 1989 and stayed there through 1996, according to the district’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Aggravated assaults were also at record totals.
Hyde believes Trump is after the optics in areas where he will get attention — at the train station, on the Mall, in areas with a concentration of tourists. “They haven’t been over here like that,” she said.
The majestic home of Frederick Douglass is here, offering a panoramic view of other parts of the city west of the river. Farther east is the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum. The plaque outside says as much about this moment as it does about history: The museum, it says, “aspires to illuminate and share the untold and often overlooked stories of people furthest from opportunity in the Greater Washington, D.C. region.”
Federal agents are in this area working with local authorities, including FBI agents and Border Patrol, as well as Metro Transit Authority police. Along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, a major thoroughfare in Anacostia, new buildings mix with older ones and small groups of people mill about, drinking from bottles and with the occasional smell of marijuana. But it is relatively quiet.
At one point, a large group of National Guard members climbs out of a van at the Anacostia Metro station, but they catch the train heading west back beneath the river. While troops are stationed at 18 stops, the last one on the green line is the Navy Yard-Ballpark station, the final one west of the river.
Guard presence has precedent in this neighborhood
There was a time when the Guard was here — or, more precisely, above it. During the high crime years, the D.C. National Guard worked with District police; officers flew aboard the Guard’s helicopters directing patrol units to crime scenes.
Norm Nixon, an associate pastor at Union Temple Baptist Church, said there are federal agents around, but their presence is not constant and no military uniforms are seen on the streets. He said local officers who try to push community policing — communicating with residents and acknowledging their concerns — will probably get blowback because of the federal presence.
He, like others, questions why Trump decided to federalize the city when violence is present virtually everywhere, including in rural areas where drugs and economic hardships have created fertile ground for lawlessness.
“The president needs to have these initiatives to make it seem like something is happening, almost like he’s got to make news,” Nixon said, adding that he is also concerned about the focus on rousting the homeless population. “What happened to those people? Are they receiving services?”
Vernon Hancock, a church elder and trustee attending a senior’s day party, said he believes Trumps’ actions are a test. “Washington, D.C., is easy because it is federal and he has the authority to do what he’s doing,” Hancock said. “It is a federal city so he can just take over. But he wants to take this to other cities and spread this.”
The big question for me is, “What will be the long-term results once the extra troops & cops are done?” Probably nil, things will just revert to the state they were in a couple weeks ago. It’s all show, no permanent substance.
Daily Mail: Tom Hanks snubbed from West Point event after Trump’s order
A West Point alumni event honoring Tom Hanks was scrapped on the day President Donald Trump officially changed the name of the Department of Defense back to the Department of War.
Trump explained Friday that he instituted the rebrand because the Pentagon got ‘very politically correct or wokey’ and the U.S. was not winning wars.
That day, a West Point alumni group announced the cancelation of an awards ceremony that was meant to have taken place September 25 to garland Hanks, who is a veterans advocate but never served in the the military himself.
The prize he would have gotten was the Sylvanus Thayer Award, which the West Point Association of Graduates gives to non-alumni who ‘draw wholesome comparison’ to the military academy’s motto: ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’
Retired Army Col. Mark Bieger, the president and CEO of the organization, announced in an email to members that they were scuttling their tribute to Hanks – who was recently slammed on social media for portraying a Trump supporter as a dimwitted racist on Saturday Night Live.
‘This decision allows the Academy to continue its focus on its core mission of preparing cadets to lead, fight, and win as officers in the world’s most lethal force, the United States Army,’ he wrote, according to the Washington Post.
The president signed an executive order – his 200th – making the rebrand official on Friday afternoon, flanked by Pete Hegseth, now called the War Secretary, and the Chairman of Joint Chiefs, Gen. Dan ‘Razin’ Caine.
The name change had been floated for weeks.
‘It has to do with winning,’ Trump explained. ‘We should have won every war. We could have won every war. But we really chose to be very politically correct or wokey and we just fight forever.’
‘We just fight to sort of tie,’ the commander-in-chief continued. ‘We never wanted to win wars. Every one of them we could have won easily with just a couple of little changes.’
‘We just didn’t fight to win. We didn’t lose anything, but we didn’t fight to win,’ the president added.
The original War Department name lasted from 1789 to 1947, with President Harry S. Truman changing the name in the aftermath of World War II when he merged the Navy, Air Force and War Departments.
‘And you know we had it,’ he said of the name. ‘And we won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything before and as I said, we won everything in between.’
As Trump was making the announcement, the department’s social media pages changed – at one point with the Pentagon’s X account calling it both the Department of War and the Department of Defense.
The president was asked why bring back ‘war’ when he was publicly seeking a Nobel Peace Prize.
‘Well I think I’ve gotten peace because of the fact that we’re strong,’ the president answered.
Trump ran in 2024 on erasing ‘wokeness’ in the military.
He’s done that in some ways by changing naming conventions.
In December 2020, Trump vetoed a defense spending bill because it included provisions to change all the names of U.S. bases that were named after Confederate generals.
The renaming process took place during President Joe Biden’s four years in office, but once Trump returned he immediately tried to get the names changed back.
The base was originally named Fort Bragg in 1918 after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.
That Bragg was a slaveowner – but he was also so inept that he helped the Confederacy lose the Civil War to U.S. forces.
In a Pentagon release in February, Fort Bragg will now be named after Roland L. Bragg.
A Pentagon spokesperson described Bragg as a World War II fighter ‘who earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge.’
Mirror US: Trump warned Pentagon name change makes US a ‘laughing stock’ to both allies and enemies
The President aims to lean into ‘warrior ethos’ after having campaigned on promises of ‘uniting forces to end the endless foreign wars’
The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War after President Donald Trump first floated the idea on Monday, according to a Fox News report. A White House official confirmed the plan to The Mirror US on Thursday.
The decision marks a stark U-turn from the president’s campaign promises in 2024 to pursue peace, and from his frequent criticisms of former President Joe Biden for driving the U.S. “closer to World War III than anybody can imagine.”
“As President Trump said, our military should be focused on offense – not just defense – which is why he has prioritized warfighters at the Pentagon instead of DEI and woke ideology. Stay tuned!” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told Reuters this week, referring to programs aimed at increasing diversity, equity and inclusion. The Trump administration has not revealed the reasons it believes the department’s name constitutes “woke ideology.” It comes after a lip reader revealed the chilling 3-word promise that Donald Trump whispered into Vladimir Putin’s ear at their Alaska summit.
The move follows a string of similar name-changing decisions by the Trump administration as a measure of projecting the president’s stance on specific policy issues. In January, Trump issued an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”. He also referred to his controversial July domestic spending bill as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which in recent days his administration has attempted to rebrand as the “working families tax cut.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also ordered the renaming of certain military vessels that previously bore the names of civil rights leaders, such as the USNS Harvey Milk. Last month, he renamed his conference room the “W.A.R. Room.” Hegseth has often proven to be concerned with the outward appearance of elements of his department, having even ordered a makeup studio to be installed inside the Pentagon and dictated which colors of nail polish are acceptable to be worn by Army soldiers.
Though restoring the name would require congressional action, the White House is reportedly exploring alternative methods to enact the change, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The decision to rename the Pentagon comes amid a broader push by Trump, Hegseth and their coalition to restore a “warrior ethos” to the federal government and America as a whole. It has included a purge of top military leaders whose views do not align with the president’s agenda.
“As Department of War, we won everything. We won everything,” Trump said last month, referring to the War Department established by Congress in 1789 to oversee the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. “I think we’re going to have to go back to that.”
The administration has also sought to ban transgender individuals from voluntarily joining the military and remove those who are currently serving on the basis of a claim that they are medically unfit. The claim has been described by civil rights groups as false and a representation of illegal discrimination, according to Reuters.
“This is so stupid and it’s going to make us a laughing stock in front of both our allies and our enemies,” one user wrote on X on Thursday.
Posturing the top defense department in the nation in a more aggressive and offensive direction is at odds with promises and statements made by Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump lobbed frequent criticisms at Biden for the fact that, during his presidency, Russia invaded Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas was ignited. “(Biden) will drive us into World War III, and we’re closer to World War III than anybody can imagine,” Trump said, according to CNN.
Last August, while endorsing anti-war former Democratic Rep. Tusli Gabbard at a National Guard conference in Detroit, Trump claimed both Democrats and Independents would vote for him because of his plan to end wars. “We’re uniting forces to end the endless foreign wars,” he said of Gabbard’s endorsement. “When I’m back in the White House, we will expel the warmongers, the profiteers … and we will restore world peace.”
“I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war,” Gabbard said. “We cannot be prosperous unless we are at peace.”
His decision in June to launch a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities threw several of his most ardent, right-wing supporters into opposition, urging the president and his allies not to engage in foreign conflicts.
Trump, who claimed that he would solve the Russia-Ukraine war before taking office on Jan. 20,” had made little headway by early September in brokering peace between the two nations. He has also dubiously claimed that he has personally ended a handful of global wars during his second term.
“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” Trump said during his inaugural address. “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier.”
It comes after Ukraine warned that Putin has a hit list of FIVE countries that he wants to invade next.

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/trump-warned-pentagon-name-change-1372151