John welcomes U.S. Naval War College professor emeritus and Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols back to the pod to discuss the implications of Donald Trump’s militarization of law enforcement in Los Angeles and an array of related topics. Nichols argues that Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard and the Marines to deal with protests of his deportation policies in L.A. is a dry run, on favorable political turf, to acclimate Americans to the sight of troops in their cities and gauge public blowback; that his partisan speech at Fort Bragg—and the silence of the generals in reaction to it—was an “obscenity;" and that these events, along with his military parade in Washington, demonstrate that Trump sees the U.S. Armed Forces as his personal “toy soldiers.” Nichols also weighs in on Israel-Iran, Russia-Ukraine, and how Trump has effectively turned the U.S. into a bystander in both conflicts.

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