Thank you to President Donald J. Trump for visiting the troops at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg military base yesterday to honor the Army’s 250th birthday coming up this Saturday!

When President Donald Trump returned from a Bastille Day visit to Paris during his first term, he asked his military brass to organize a parade akin to the one he’d watched march down the Champs-Élysées.

His defense secretary at the time, James Mattis, said he’d rather “swallow acid,” according to a book written by a former staffer.

Trump later received a comparable response from another defense secretary, Mark Esper, when he floated using active duty troops on American soil to quell violent protests.

“The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations,” Esper told reporters in 2020.

Times have changed.

“We will use every asset at our disposal to quell the violence and restore law and order right away,” Trump said on Tuesday during a visit to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he defended sending the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles.