President Donald Trump told the nation’s most senior military officers that the United States is “under invasion from within,” using a rare, hours-long address at Marine Corps Base Quantico to press the armed forces into a larger domestic role and to describe major Democratic-run cities as internal battlegrounds that should be “training grounds” for troops. Speaking to generals and admirals flown in from commands across the globe, Trump said the military’s “first and most important priority” was defending the homeland from a domestic enemy and repeatedly returned to the same formulation: “It’s a war from within … We’re under invasion from within.” The remarks—delivered in a largely silent auditorium that underscored the military’s norm of political neutrality—set out an agenda that would test legal limits on the use of federal forces inside the United States and deepen long-running concerns about politicization of the chain of command.
Trump’s speech on 30 September at Quantico, about 30 miles south of Washington, came during an unprecedented, Pentagon-wide gathering convened by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump linked his domestic focus to what he cast as decades of misdirected deployments overseas, telling the officers that “defending the homeland” had been neglected while “politicians somehow came to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia, while America is under invasion from within.” He named San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles among cities he wants the military to help “straighten … out, one-by-one,” and argued that threats inside the United States were “no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms.”
The president also proposed using “dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” an idea he has floated in recent weeks as part of a broader push to redirect the services toward domestic missions. The Associated Press described the address as “unusual,” noting the emphasis on cities as troop training sites and an accompanying vow by Hegseth to end “politically correct” leadership, while ABC News reported that Trump told the room he had already ordered federal forces to Portland over the weekend and threatened to expand deployments despite objections from state officials. The Posse Comitatus Act generally bars the use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement absent specific statutory authority such as the Insurrection Act, and legal analysts have said proposals to employ active-duty forces in routine urban policing would collide with those constraints. Time magazine characterized the president’s framing as a “war from within” and said the plans risk running up against Posse Comitatus.
Much of the speech focused on domestic security and culture-war themes more commonly heard at campaign rallies, and the reception inside the auditorium reflected the military’s norm of avoiding visible reactions to partisan lines. Pool reporters and multiple outlets said the room was notably quiet through extended passages; at one point Trump acknowledged the silence—“I’ve never walked into a room so silent before”—and added a joking warning that officers could “do anything you want … And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.” When the address ended, some stood and offered light applause; others remained seated.