Former President Barack Obama tore into President Donald Trump‘s attempts to use the military in American cities, saying that democracy is being“weakened deliberately.” Obama cited Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops into Chicago, arguing that a president sending U.S. troops into American cities “against their own people” is “inherently corrupting,” and he’s not wrong. All of this is deliberate.
“It wasn’t controversial for me to go to other countries and say, ‘You know what? It’s a good idea for militaries to be under civilian control,’ because when you have military that can direct force against their own people, that is inherently corrupting,” Obama said on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast released Monday.
The former president further said the Trump administration is attempting “what looks like a deliberate end run around” the law that bars the military from being used for civilian policing. “That is a genuine effort to weaken how we have understood democracy,” Obama said.
“If I had sent in the National Guard into Texas and just said, ‘You know what? A lot of problems in Dallas, a lot of crime there, and I don’t care what Gov. Abbott says, I’m going to kind of take over law enforcement, because I think things are out of control,’ it is mind-boggling to me how Fox News would have responded,” Obama said.
“We don’t want masked folks with rifles and machine guns patrolling our streets,” Obama added. “We want cops on the beat who know the neighborhood and the kids around, and that’s how we keep the peace around here.”
