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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's inflammatory social media post that he is ready and willing to send Marines into Los Angeles to confront protesters is nothing more than a ploy to curry favor with Donald Trump.

That is the opinion of long-time military analyst Max Boot who pointed out that Hegseth's tenure at the Pentagon has been disastrous and the protests in LA against ICE agents storming businesses while looking for immigrants handed the former Fox News personality a chance to get out of the Trump administration doghouse.

On Sunday, MSNBC "The Weekend" co-host Elise Jordan promoted her guest, "It really is something that Pete Hegseth jumped from National Guard to Marines at Camp Pendleton, right?"

"This is not what you want in a situation like this, a trigger-happy secretary of defense," Boot began. "Now, you know, I think to, you know, one thing you can say in favor of the Trump administration is I don't think that they are looking for wars overseas. They're not necessarily looking to involve U.S forces in conflict with Iran or other bad actors, but it does seem like they are looking for wars at home. They're looking for confrontations at home."

"And, you know, this is very convenient for somebody like Pete Hegseth, who's had a bad first few months on the job where, you know, he was involved in the Signalgate scandal, where he was texting us attack plans to the editor of The Atlantic, as well as to a lot of his colleagues in the government and on an unsecured app," he pointed out.

"He's had massive turmoil in the secretary of defense office, people coming and going. He's been focused on culture wars, not on really preparing America for actual wars against actual adversaries. And from what we read, he has not been in good odor in the White House, that President Trump has not been happy with a lot of the stuff that he's doing, including when he wanted to give Elon Musk access to U.S. war plans involving China."

"So this is an opportunity for him to get in Trump's good graces to, you know, be on the same page as the White House and say, 'Yeah, you're sending a National Guard. I'm going to send in Marines.' It's completely inappropriate it's very, very dangerous because you should not be having active-duty U.S. troops involved in missions on U.S. soil, barring some catastrophe, which has not happened here."

"And I think this is the key point you're talking about dozens or hundreds of demonstrators," he told the MSNBC host. "There is nothing that remotely would justify the deployment of active duty Marines to Los Angeles."

You can watch below or at the link

- YouTube youtu.be

A former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official during Donald Trump's first term as president claimed that what is happening in Los Angeles is exactly what the president has been hoping for so he can unleash the military on Americans.

Speaking on MSNBC's "The Weekend," former DHS chief of staff Miles Taylor stated the protests in Los Angles against militarized ICE agents do not rise to the level of insurrection that Trump's inner circle is claiming, but it has handed him the pretext to do what he has always wanted to do.

As he explained, "This is, in my opinion, the single most significant act you've seen yet in the Trump administration. People are going to start to come to that realization over the next few days. This is the big one, this is the one that people like me were warning about when I came forward first in 2020 and started talking about the things I was most worried about that I saw in the first Trump administration that the president wanted to do."

"At the top of that list was deploying the U.S. military on U.S. soil to enforce domestic law," he recalled. "We had stopped Donald Trump in 2019 from invoking the Insurrection Act because we and our lawyers didn't think the way he wanted to do it was legal. In fact, I rushed to the White House as he was planning to make the State of the Union address and he wanted to insert a line about how he was invoking the act and deploying the U.S. military on U.S. soil. We felt like that was a dangerous slippery slope so that Donald Trump would end up taking control of national law enforcement."

"Make no mistake, his own lieutenants were worried he would create a de facto police state if he was going to be deploying the military on U.S. soil," he added.

"What is happening in Los Angeles is not a rational response to what they're seeing on the ground," he pointed out. "This is indeed, in my view, pre-planned to be able to give the president justification to invoke the Insurrection Act and it made sense that where they decided to do these raids was Los Angeles."

"I very firmly believe in the White House they suspected the response would be protests, and then they could use the protests as a response to use the Insurrection Act," he elaborated. "But this is much, much bigger than Los Angeles. I'm telling you, from the first term, if Donald Trump had gotten the authority to use the military on U.S. soil to enforce domestic law, it was going to go much beyond enforcement of immigration law. That was our fear and we are seeing potentially the early innings of that play out in real-time."

You can watch below or at the link.

- YouTube youtu.be

Hours after sending in federalized National Guard troops into Los Angeles to support DHS and ICE agents who have been taking part in highly militarized raids on businesses in California and snatching up immigrants, Donald Trump threatened the pro-immigrant protesters.

After days of raids, involving CS gas, "less than lethal" rounds fired at protesters, and use flash bang grenades that have infuriated Californians, Trump fell short of invoking the Insurrection Act but still sent in a reported 2,000 National Guardsman.

He then took to Truth Social, to warn protesters that they will not be allowed to wear masks in the same manner that ICE and DHS agents have done to protect their identities.

The president wrote, "Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest. We have an incompetent Governor (Newscum) and Mayor (Bass) who were, as usual (just look at how they handled the fires, and now their VERY SLOW PERMITTING disaster. Federal permitting is complete!), unable to to handle the task."

He then warned, "These Radical Left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will NOT BE TOLERATED. Also, from now on, MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests. What do these people have to hide, and why??? Again, thank you to the National Guard for a job well done!"

You can see his post here.