Former President Barack Obama criticizes United States President Donald Trump's recent National Guard deployments, calling the practice a dangerous "politicization of the military."
Speaking on Marc Maron's WTF podcast on Monday, Obama said, "When you have a military that can direct force against their own people, that is inherently corrupting." He cited his own administration's policy of emphasizing civilian control over the armed forces.
Obama argued that the Trump administration's moves (deploying National Guard troops to cities including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis, and threatening deployments to Portland and Chicago) appear to circumvent laws designed to prevent military involvement in civilian policing. "That is a genuine effort to weaken how we have understood democracy."
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The former president referenced the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, noting that using the military domestically should be limited to "extraordinary emergencies." He contrasted Trump's actions with his own tenure, explaining that National Guard deployments during Baltimore protests in 2015 were controlled by the state's governor, not the federal government.
"If I had sent in the National Guard into Texas and just said, 'I'm going to take over law enforcement,' it is mind boggling to me how Fox News would have responded," Obama said, referring to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
He added, "We don't want masked folks with rifles and machine guns patrolling our streets. We want cops on the beat who know the neighborhood and the kids around, and that's how we keep the peace around here." What do you think about Obama's comments?