'Amateur hour at the White House': Katrina hero Honoré slams Trump for attempt to sic military on civilians
Appearing on MSNBC on Saturday morning, retired General Russel Honoré -- who oversaw and coordinated military relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina -- was first asked about the tragic tower collapse in Florida before host Ali Velshi turned to reports that Donald Trump attempted to unleash the military on George Floyd protesters that included shooting at them.
"I want to ask you about something," Velshi began. "Last June 1st when I was covering the protests against the murder of George Floyd, there is new reporting now that the president at the time had talked about invoking the Insurrection Act... You're a military man who understands history, you understand the rule that the Roman Empire had about crossing the Rubicon. There is a general feeling in the western world that the military is not used for civil law enforcement."
"You existed in a different circumstance because you were called to bring order to New Orleans after Katrina," he continued. "But how do we evaluate this idea that Donald Trump was thinking about using the Insurrection Act to settle the protests?"
"It was amateur hour in the White House," the retired general shot back. "They used everything they could to try and retain power. This would have been most inappropriate and as the lawyers in the Pentagon would tell you, it doesn't meet the constitutional test for using troops inside the United States."
"And that law is laid out pretty good," he continued. "The Congress and the Senate has a role to play. But thank god General Mark Milley and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense at the time pushed back hard enough and basically told him to go shove it -- they weren't doing it."
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