According to nearly a dozen retired officers and current military lawyers, as well as scholars who teach at West Point and Annapolis, an intense if quiet debate is underway inside the U.S. military community about what orders it would be obliged to obey if President-elect Donald Trump decides to follow through on his previous warnings that he might deploy troops against what he deems domestic threats, including political enemies, dissenters and immigrants.
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I hope Trump is dumb enough to spend years hollowing the military out instead of doing the easy things. All he has to do in red states is convince the governors to use their National Guard. If they’re under state orders there’s no legal conflict. And in blue states he could start giving badges to the Proud Boys or whoever, (literally anyone willing to do his bidding) and set them loose as federal agents.
What the old officer corps is really afraid of here is the destruction of military norms and institutions.