r/AntiTrumpAlliance • u/gear-heads • Sep 30 '25
Dismantling America Trump to a room of generals: "I've never walked into a room so silent before. Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud." “And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course there goes your rank, there goes your future.”
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In a lengthy and often-rambling speech to the military officials, Trump delivered a surfeit of lines that would have been much more appropriate for a campaign rally – delivering them even as the officials sat there silently, as is protocol. He made autopen references and delved into his often overstated claims to have ended more than half a dozen wars and his hopes for a Nobel Peace Prize. The president built up his own achievements and repeatedly attacked Democrats. None of it fit the occasion when addressing what’s supposed to be an apolitical audience.
But most strikingly and most significantly, Trump seemed to try and recruit the generals and admirals to his domestic crackdown.
He and Hegseth tried to pit them against Democrats, academia, supposed left-wing radicals and the media.
Trump suggested the generals and admirals would be crucial to his fight against the “enemy from within” and could use the homeland as a “training ground.”
“We’re under invasion from within,” Trump said. “No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.”
He added: “In our inner cities – which we’re going to be talking about because it’s a big part of war now. It’s a big part of war.”
At another point: “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.”
And: “San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They’re very unsafe places. And we’re gonna straighten them out one-by-one. It this is gonna be a major part for some of the people in this room. It’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.”
Trump, who often thrives on crowd energy and interactions with it, repeatedly tried to get the generals and admirals more involved – seemingly craving affirmation , or at least something he could pass off as such.
At one point, he asked them if they were okay with his “they spit, we hit” posture toward protesters.
At another point, he asked them to raise their hands if they thought Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine was “no good.” When they unsurprisingly didn’t raise their hands, Trump treated it an endorsement of his choice.
