Would Trump and Hegseth order the military to shoot protesters?
Recent events involving the murder of protesters in Minneapolis, MN at the hands of ICE agents have now brought us to a point where we must ask a question once thought unthinkable: Would Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth order the military to shoot protesters when he invokes the Insurrection Act?
Before you write off this question as a case of Trump Derangement Syndrome or the rantings of a right-wing conspiracy theorist, let’s take a look back at a similar situation that occurred during Trump’s first term (via The New Republic):
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in many interviews while promoting his book in 2022 that, during a White House meeting to discuss the protests, Trump turned to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and asked: “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?”
Naturally, Esper and Milley were both aghast. But now fast-forward to … the confirmation hearing of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. As fate would have it, Hegseth was among the National Guard troops deployed by Trump to quell those George Floyd protests. Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii asked Hegseth about that day, and how he might handle a similar situation were he the Pentagon chief.
“In June of 2020, then-President Trump directed former secretary of defense Mark Esper to shoot protesters in the legs in downtown D.C., an order Secretary Esper refused to comply with,” Hirono said. “Would you carry out such an order from President Trump?”
“Senator, I was in the Washington, D.C., National Guard unit that was in Lafayette Square during those events,” Hegseth replied, “carrying a riot shield on behalf of my country.” …
As Hegseth was describing his experience, Hirono pressed the point: “Would you carry out an order to shoot protesters in the legs as directed to Secretary Esper?”
“I saw 50 Secret Service agents get injured by rioters trying to jump over the fence,” Hegseth continued, “set a church on fire and destroy a statue. Chaos.”
“That sounds to me that you will comply with such an order,” Hirono concluded. “You will shoot protesters in the leg.”
Hegseth had a clear opportunity to say, “No, senator, I can’t imagine ordering that.” He didn’t take it. (Emphasis mine)
Last week, even before ICE committed its second homicide of a protester when agents brutally murdered Alex Pretti, Trump threatened to invoke the “Insurrection Act” of 1807 and deploy the military to Minneapolis, MN to shut down people exercising their First Amendment right to protest his defacto Gestapo (ICE) and their Brownshirts-style treatment of people who disagree with him.
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump said in social media post. (Emphasis mine)
As a refresher, it’s important to remember that Trump’s plan to create a police state using the military began on Inauguration Day with an executive order declaring a national emergency on the southern border — an order that required Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem to provide a joint report updating conditions at the border along with their recommendations on whether to invoke the Insurrection Act:
“Within 90 days of the date of this proclamation, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall submit a joint report to the President about the conditions at the southern border of the United States and any recommendations regarding additional actions that may be necessary to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, including whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807.”
When he deployed the National Guard to LA, Trump stated his intention to use the military when he said that “the Secretary of Defense may employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.”
A mere 48 hours later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did his master’s bidding when he mobilized nearly 1000 marines to LA to “support” the National Guard with their police actions.
Several months after Trump’s Inauguration Day executive order — and with Trump having already used the military as a domestic police force — we learned from an internal memo that Hegseth and Noem were on board with using Insurrection Act and the eventual declaration of martial law from the beginning (via NewRepublic.com):
The memo lays out the need to persuade top Pentagon officials to get much more serious about using the military to combat illegal immigration—and not just at the border. It suggests that DHS is anticipating many more uses of the military in urban centers, noting that L.A.-style operations may be needed “for years to come.”
“The memo is alarming, because it speaks to the intent to use the military within the United States at a level not seen since Japanese internment,” Carrie Lee, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, told me. “The military is the most powerful, coercive tool our country has. We don’t want the military doing law enforcement. It absolutely undermines the rule of law.”
The memo was authored by Philip Hegseth—the younger brother of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—who is a senior adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and DHS liaison officer to the Defense Department. As such, it also sheds light on Hegseth the Younger’s role, which has been the subject of media speculation labeling him an obscure but influential figure in his brother’s MAGA orbit. (Emphasis mine)
I hate being right about this, but what I hate even more is when so-called conservatives with larger platforms than I have continue to defend Trump’s tyrannical ambitions. For example, take Steve Deace and the pro-Trump echo chamber at Blaze TV … please! (apologies to Groucho Marx). In a lame attempt to make it appear that he was only inviting discussion — as if voiding the Constitution is open to debate — Deace used his X account (formerly Twitter) to suggest that since “the Left” (i.e. Democrats) have abandoned the Constitution, perhaps “our side” (i.e. Trumpists) should consider doing the same. I’m cutting and pasting it below in case it should mysteriously disappear in the future:
There is an argument simmering on the Right about whether or not the Constitution is still effective in maintaining order and preserving our way of life, given the broken social compact we often address on our show. I think if we’re going to have that debate, we need to begin it at the beginning. The most important words in the Constitution are “we the people.”
The people were not made for the Constitution. The Constitution was made for (and by) the people. We are not a system of governance. We are a people, and therefore we agree to submit ourselves to a shared system of governance. Before there was a Constitution there was a country, and that country was its people.
Who are “we the people” referred to? What culture(s) do they represent? What customs and heritages do they have in common? What values do they share that make this Constitution even remotely possible?
The Left has abandoned any pretense of abiding by the Constitution, because it FIRST answered those questions and understood it had nothing in common with us but a shared land mass. And as we see painfully on a daily basis, it behaves accordingly.
Therefore, it seems to me this debate on our side has to start from that sobering premise, and then answer the aforementioned questions, in order to rightly understand the signs of the times. (Emphasis mine)
Trump and Hegseth have already demonstrated their willingness to murder people they don’t like — having already done so numerous times by blowing up small boats in the Caribbean and murdering survivors — so using the military as domestic police charged with murdering protestors across America isn’t really that much of a stretch.
But hey, at least they beat the evil Democrats in 2024; they would have surely done much worse.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative and the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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