Recent actions by President Donald Trump may seem excessively dramatic, but when you put them into context, their true purpose is revealed.
Let’s review the history. In January 2025, the president sent a deployment of 1,600 Marines and soldiers to the southern border. In the following weeks, this deployment was augmented by a Stryker Brigade and an aviation battalion. Further deployments of 1,500 troops to the border were ordered by the Pentagon, bringing the total number of active-duty troops to around 3,600. It’s unclear what these troops accomplished, because we don’t hear much about them anymore. Most political analysts assumed the action was just for show.
In June 2025, the president ordered approximately 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to the city of Los Angeles, purportedly to protect federal buildings and personnel from violent protesters. The National Guard troops were federalized, meaning control was shifted from the state to the federal government. The Marines were fully armed, active-duty personnel, trained to kill on the battlefield.
In reality, these troops did nothing constructive. They stood around while the LAPD did its usual job. The exercise was a costly waste of time and resources. Eventually, Trump pulled most of the troops off the streets.
Then on Aug. 11, the president announced he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., and putting the city’s police department under federal control. The citizens of our nation’s capital were soon going to see armed soldiers and military vehicles on neighborhood street corners.
The reason for this extraordinary show of force? The president claimed he needed to “rescue” Washington from “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.”
His rationale is invented. In reality, the crime rate in Washington, D.C., has been steadily dropping to a 30-year low. When USNews published its list of the “Most Dangerous Places in the US in 2025-2026,” the District of Columbia didn’t even make it! (The top five most dangerous cities were Memphis, Tennessee; Oakland, California; St. Louis, Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland; and Detroit, Michigan.)
Troops have hit the streets in Washington; hopefully the same thing will happen as in Los Angeles: They’ll stand around, doing nothing, until Trump quietly pulls them back.
So why is the president now sending active-duty troops to American cities?
For two reasons. First, you may note that both target cities have Black female mayors: Karen Bass in Los Angeles and Muriel Bowser in Washington. Draw your own conclusion about that.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, President Trump is conditioning us to accept, and be comfortable with, the presence of armed soldiers on our streets. He’s normalizing what has long been considered an extreme misuse of our professional military. His formula is simple: 1) Concoct a fake “crisis.” 2) Send in armed troops. 3) Let them stand around and be seen. 4) When the shock has subsided, quietly send them home.
This made-for-TV theater is building toward one goal: to suspend the 2026 elections by claiming a national emergency. It’s a no-brainer that President Trump aspires to be an absolute ruler, and within six months into his term, he’s made astonishing progress. The very last thing he wants is a free and fair election in 2026, which will almost certainly cost him the House. And the presidential election in 2028? Forget about it!
We can expect more of the same. If the president is left unchecked, the process of acclimation will continue until we no longer flinch when armed soldiers pass us on the street.
Gloucester resident Thomas Hauck is a professional book editor and ghostwriter.