Donald Trump suggested that he was prevented from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states during his presidency.
He has not specified how he might use the military during a second term, but experts say that the Insurrection Act would give him almost unfettered power to do so.
Trump has also spoken openly about his plans to use the military at the border and in cities struggling with violent crime, as well as against foreign drug cartels.
“The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it, and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,” Trump said. “Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.”
“The principal constraint on the president’s use of the Insurrection Act is basically political, that presidents don’t want to be the guy who sent tanks rolling down Main Street,” said Joseph Nunn, a national security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice.
“There’s not much really in the law to stay the president’s hand.”
Nunn said, “It is a law that in many ways was created for a country that doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.
Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank, said, “There are a lot of institutional checks and balances in our country that are pretty well-developed legally, and it’ll make it hard for a president to just do something randomly out of the blue.”
“But Trump is good at developing a semi-logical train of thought that might lead to a place where there’s enough mayhem, there’s enough violence and legal murkiness” to call in the military.
However, such attempts could elicit pushback from the Pentagon and would likely raise questions about military oaths and presidential power.
