Why did Donald Trump gather his generals, commented on the program "Hristo Botev" Hristofor Karadjov, a professor of journalism at the University of California.
The enemy within
"This was a statement he made at the 44th minute of his speech, which until then we had all been listening to with distinctly general expressions on our faces. When suddenly the president said: "Well, we were talking here with Pete Hegsett, the Secretary of Defense, and I told him, well, Pete, we need to use these cities of ours, which are in a very bad condition, with a high crime rate, to use them as training grounds for the troops". Everyone freezes at this moment because they realize that something extremely important and unusual is being said.
I don't know who the "enemies within" are, but what he has been saying for a long time is two things. First, that cities in America are dying under the pressure of their problems, especially crime problems, which, of course, is absolutely untrue, because crime has fallen in the United States and continues to fall over the past 30 years. The other thing he constantly talked about is the "invasion from without". How we are almost in a state of war because Mexico, Venezuela, etc. are sending us these illegal immigrants who want to come in and I don't know what to do in America. As if illegal immigrants come here only to sell drugs, rape women, kidnap little children and God knows what. Of course, this is called instilling fear, instilling hatred, division. Yes, indeed, the problems with the homeless have not been solved for years, but this is for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that we are in some kind of war.
I think that Trump's entire appearance here was absolutely improvised and the gathering of these military men was absolutely unclear why it was happening. The media is commenting on it as an ego trip of the ego of the Secretary of War, who gathered them to tell the generals that they should not be fat and that there will be no more generals in skirts. The problem is that by creating such a psychosis, you can make everyone your enemy.
In addition, to bring in troops, as he did with the National Guard, which is federalized, and brought it into Los Angeles, to Chicago he promises to bring it in, to Portland he promises, to Memphis, to I don't know where... If you have been to a Third World country where armed soldiers often walk along the beaches with machine guns, does that make anyone feel safer? On the contrary. It makes me personally very worried. To bring troops into the cities for a month - what will they do with crime? They will not solve anything. The criminals will hide for a month. Absolutely pointless. This is done precisely for the purpose of creating psychosis.
Then you do whatever you want with this psychosis. You create a crisis and you resolve it yourself. The fact is that what Trump is doing is, first, division, instilling some kind of psychosis, some kind of fear. These are his trademarks. But the other thing he is doing is creating uncertainty. When there is uncertainty, it is a tactic, even a strategy."
Trump's war with the media
"A very interesting thing happened last week when Jimmy Kimmel was stopped from his show under pressure from the state. Because this was pure state pressure through this commission. Pressure on "Disney" through the Federal Communications Commission. It is a commission of only a few people who are appointed, and it has enormous powers and all kinds of decisions can be made there - to close stations, to revoke licenses, to not approve mergers of corporations and media. The head of this commission, Brendan Carr, said it plainly. If he had kept quiet and behaved like a Sonya Momchilova who only mutters something, fine, but he said it plainly that this was actually pressure on "Disney" and this crossed a red line for Republicans and Democrats.
Because even hardcore Republicans like Ted Cruz, even hardcore conservatives like podcasters, bloggers, even they said: "Wait, wait, wait. This can't happen. Because if this is done now, on the next spin or the next deal of the cards it will hit us". This is something that really stepped on a lot of people's First Amendment corn, that after all, Americans believe very seriously in freedom of speech and the right to express themselves. As for Trump's battle with the media, I think it will end with the media winning.
On the other hand, I can say for sure that there is definitely fear in society.
"There are people who are afraid to speak. I literally had a very long conversation yesterday with colleagues who are afraid to speak and take positions because they fear that their names will then be taken out, say, from the minutes of meetings. They are taken out by activists, most often right-wing activists, but not only, and are posted on social media. And real persecution begins on social networks. People start calling you, writing things that they know where you live, that if you continue, for example, with "gender propaganda", they will come and kill your children.
These are serious things. And people are really seriously afraid. And I didn't expect that I would say it in 2025, in America. I've been here since 1997. This is the first time this year that I've seen it and said it. I hope it will be overcome in a sufficiently convincing way and this whole madness will simply remain in the past."
How do you overcome the fear of being named, whether through social networks, through the newspaper "PIK", or through a prosecutor's office.
"It's difficult. Very difficult. Because you see how strongly it works in our society, and in an even more disadvantaged society than ours, like the Russian one, for example. Fear is the most difficult thing to overcome. People are afraid of all sorts of things. Often they are irrationally afraid. The idea of fear, when created intentionally, is precisely that it awakens some irrational, but actually quite strong emotions.
This brings us back to the beginning of the conversation. Bringing in troops to fight some crime. That's exactly what creates some kind of psychosis. It creates a feeling where you can see the statistics that crime has dropped by 50% in the last 30 years, but you say to yourself: "Ah, they're lying to us here". And people say to themselves: "Ah, we don't care what the statistics are, but I'm personally afraid that it could happen to me". It's very hard to argue with that. Because emotionally and with everything emotional, it's very hard to argue. And that's what politicians like Trump are betting on."