Now, with less than two weeks until Election Day, some of Trump’s most senior former advisers are warning Americans to take his militaristic impulses seriously. His longest-serving chief of staff, John Kelly, told the New York Times that he feels Trump meets the definition of “fascist,” expected personal loyalty from military leaders and spoke admiringly of Adolf Hitler.
To use the U.S. military in terms of domestic law enforcement, it’s not the American way,” Kelly said in an interview with The Washington Post. “The fear is he will tell them to do something illegal, and that’s a really bad thing to do. And then you have generals resigning. And very possibly within the ranks, you have people refusing to do it. These guys are going to follow the law.”
In running to retake the White House, Trump has named his unfulfilled demands to deploy the military against civil unrest as one of his top regrets — and one he aims not to repeat. His allies have laid plans for him to do so by invoking emergency authority under the Insurrection Act of 1807.
“The next time, I’m not waiting,” he said at a March 13, 2023, campaign speech in Davenport, Iowa. In a Fox News interview Oct. 13, he said the military could handle his domestic political opponents such as congressional Democrats and election protesters, whom he deemed “the enemy from within.”…