White House Denies Widely-Repeated Story That Trump Wanted 10,000 ‘Active-Duty’ Troops To End DC Protests

Update (1100ET): Surprise! It appears this was more ‘fake news’. As Akyssa Farah, White House Director of Strategic Communications, Pentagon Press Secretary, explained in a tweet, “…this is false… I was in the meeting”

This is FALSE. I was in the mtg. @realDonaldTrump very clearly directed DOD to surge the National Guard – not active duty- after nights of vandalism & arson in DC. It worked, & we’ve seen powerful, peaceful demonstrations since. https://t.co/3SBkpFfqKQ

— Alyssa Farah (@Alyssafarah) June 7, 2020

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Still, this doesn’t fit the narrative at all… and so we will wait patiently for CNN’s ‘correction’ in their story.

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A new report shows just how close President Trump was from giving the order to deploy upwards of 10,000 active military troops on the streets of Washington, DC, as tens of thousands of angry Americans descended to an area around the White House to protest the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

Reuters spoke with a senior US official, on condition of anonymity, who gave his account of the meeting in the Oval Office on Monday (June 1). The senior official said the meeting was “contentious,” due mostly because Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and Attorney General William Barr, told the president they did not agree with deployment plans of active military to combat protesters. 

Throughout the week, the president’s mood changed when National Guard members lined the streets of the White House, and new security fences were erected around the perimeter. Besides the Capital Beltway, more than 43,000 National Guard members in 34 states have been deployed to keep order as hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets in an unprecedented effort to address racial inequality. 

Instead of having active military troops guarding the White House, Esper told the president that soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, and other special units were on call in the area if unrest worsened. 

“Having active-duty forces available but not in the city was enough for the president for the time,” the official said.

Days after the meeting, Esper said during a Wednesday (June 3) press conference that he did not support invoking the Insurrection Act, which would give the president the ability to deploy active military on the streets. The senior official said after the presser, the president yelled at Esper. 

“I’ve always believed and continue to believe that the National Guard is best suited for performing domestic support to civil authorities in these situations in support of local law enforcement,” Esper said at the press conference. 

NEW: Defense Sec. Esper: “I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”

“The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most … dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now.” pic.twitter.com/GcMBjs73rI

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 3, 2020

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President Trump’s move to quickly militarize the federal response to squash protesters led to rare public statements from former military officials, including the president’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, a retired Marine Corps four-star general, who denounced the president for dividing the nation and accused him of ordering the military to violate the constitutional rights of the people. 

Both Esper and Milley issued similar memos to Defense Department personnel and troops, reminding them of their oath to the US Constitution, which protects the right to peaceful protests.

Something clearly changed last week in President Trump’s bubble as top aides disagreed with the president’s proposal to deploy active military on the streets. With unrest across the country likely to continue for the third week, we would like to direct you to our April 3 post where it appears the White House knew social decay was ahead:

“What could come next is social unrest – households are crushed, have no money and or job, and that is likely why President Trump signed an executive order last Friday to call up as many as one million National Guard and reservists – not just to fight the virus outbreak – but to maintain social order.”