Trump Relishes Troops in American Streets While Shunning Conflict Overseas
The seemingly disparate postures of recent days speak to the president’s complicated relationship with the military.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/14/...e_code=1.O08.sq5k.AedvnbW_t_cy&smid=url-share
“… This is the day Mr. Trump has coveted for years. He wanted a similar display of military might for his first inauguration in 2017, and when that did not work out, he
grew even more fixated on the idea later in the year when he visited France for its
Bastille Day celebration. But military officers, including his second White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, resisted, convinced that it was not in keeping with American tradition and would instead evoke the kinds of displays favored in autocratic countries like Russia, North Korea and Iran.
Mr. Kelly concluded that Mr. Trump had a warped view of the military. The president grew frustrated that senior officers were not in his view loyal to him politically and personally. “Why can’t you be like the German generals?”
he once asked, referring to Hitler’s generals, according to Mr. Kelly. Once, during another trip to France, he skipped a visit to a cemetery for American troops killed in World War I, saying it was
“filled with losers.” Mr. Trump denied both accounts.
In the final year of his first term, he wanted to
invoke the Insurrection Act to send active-duty troops into the streets of cities where protests against the murder of George Floyd had become violent, only to be rebuffed by Mark T. Esper, his defense secretary, and Gen. Mark A. Milley, his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
After the 2020 election, retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn and other allies showed up at the Oval Office urging him to order the military to seize voting machines and rerun elections in states where he lost, an idea he considered but did not follow through on, knowing that General Milley would resist.…”