House Republicans are investigating Jan. 6. NPR fact-checked the first hearing

In order to please tRump and stave off the maga thugs republicans in elected office are trying desperately to change reality. Some are doing it to practice what tRump is able to do which is to make people accept his version of reality even when it is completely false and made up. No one but tRump can do that and he has been doing it since he was a kid. He has the ability to convince himself that what he wants to believe is true is true because he wants it. By the fact he was always wealthy or people thought he was it worked and twice he has had the power of the presidency along with the cult behind him. Other republicans don’t have that ability and can not command the maga cult. But that won’t stop them from trying. Hugs.

January 16, 20265:00 AM ET

Tom Dreisbach

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., is leading a congressional subcommittee reinvestigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Trump administration has promoted a distorted and whitewashed history of that day’s events.

Andrew Harnik/AP

A new Republican-led congressional subcommittee to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol held its first public hearing this week. GOP lawmakers used the opportunity to criticize the Biden administration and, at times, promote conspiracy theories about the riot. An NPR fact check has identified multiple false and misleading claims from the hearing, which coincides with a broader effort by the Trump administration to rewrite the history of the attack.

NPR Investigation: January 6, 2021

Trump’s airbrushed version of Jan. 6 distorts history. See the evidence for yourself

The hearing unfolded against the backdrop of Trump’s mass pardons for the Jan. 6 defendants almost one year ago. Stewart Rhodes, the former leader of the Oath Keepers who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the attack and sentenced to 18 years in prison, appeared at the front of the audience. Rhodes is one of a small group of former defendants who did not receive a full pardon from Trump, and instead received a commutation. As a result, Rhodes was released from prison but his seditious conspiracy conviction remains on his record.

The official topic for Wednesday’s hearing was “Examining the Investigation into the DNC and RNC Pipe Bombs.” On Jan. 6, just as rioters began breaching the outer perimeter of the Capitol, two bombs were discovered outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees, diverting law enforcement resources at a critical moment.

During the Biden administration, the investigation into who planted the bombs stalled, and the lack of an arrest fueled conspiracy theories. Dan Bongino, the conservative podcaster who would later become deputy director of the FBI, said on his show in November 2024 that he was certain the bombs were placed by “either a connected anti-Trump insider or this was an inside job.”

A year later, Bongino told a very different story.

Former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino confirming the arrest of a suspect in the Jan. 6 pipe bomb case at the Department of Justice in 2025.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

While serving as a top FBI official, he appeared at a press conference announcing charges against Brian Cole Jr., a 30-year-old man from Virginia accused of planting the bombs. Cole, who has pleaded not guilty, twice voted for Trump, according to his lawyer. Federal prosecutors allege that Cole confessed and said he believed votes had been “tampered” with in the 2020 election.

Bongino addressed his shifting stance on the pipe bomber case on Fox News in December 2025. “I was paid in the past for my opinions,” Bongino said, “but that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director.” Bongino left the FBI at the beginning of January 2026 and is set to return to podcasting.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who chairs the subcommittee, has made the pipe bomb case a central focus of his inquiry. He repeatedly criticized the FBI for failing to crack the case for nearly five years and said internal documents “paint a dismal picture” of the investigation during the Biden administration.

In one of the few moments of bipartisan agreement, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., praised the FBI under Director Kash Patel for making an arrest, calling it “a rare bright spot for federal law enforcement over the last year.”

But with the pipe bombing case now moving through the courts — rather than the political arena — lawmakers sometimes veered into claims that did not match the facts.

Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

The claim:

“The Biden FBI did have undercover agents and confidential informants embedded within the rally crowds,” said Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La. “And the Biden FBI did conspire to entrap MAGA Americans prior to J6 and then successfully entrapped several hundred Americans on J6.”

The facts:

Joe Biden was not president on Jan. 6 — Donald Trump was.

At the time of the attack, the FBI was led by Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee.

Joe Biden took office on Jan. 20, 2021, two weeks after the riot, and Wray remained FBI director for the duration of his presidency.

A Department of Justice inspector general report examined the presence of confidential FBI sources in the crowds on Jan. 6 and found that “none of these FBI [Confidential Human Sources] was authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.” The report also found no evidence “showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6.”

Higgins’ office did not respond to a request for comment.

NPR Investigation: January 6, 2021

As Trump rewrites history, victims of the Jan. 6 riot say they feel ‘betrayed’

The claim:

Raskin said Trump failed to act decisively to stop the riot and “did nothing to send out the National Guard under his unilateral direct control in the District of Columbia.”

In response, Loudermilk countered that Trump “cannot just send the National Guard unless the National Guard is requested by the legislative branch.”

Referring to former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, Loudermilk said, “There were multiple requests made by the former chief of police for National Guard before the request to call them was given. And that was only after shots were fired in the Capitol. That request was made to the Department of Defense in the one o’clock hour on Jan. 6.”

The facts:

The president has direct control of the D.C. National Guard, and the Capitol Police requested assistance from the guard prior to the breach of the building. Still, troops did not arrive until hours later.

Loudermilk appears to have jumbled the timeline of the National Guard’s response, which is laid out in reports from both the Capitol Police and Department of Defense Office of Inspector General.

At 1:09 p.m. and again at 1:22 p.m., former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund asked the House and Senate sergeants at arms to declare an emergency and formally request help from the National Guard. By that point, rioters had breached the outer perimeter of the Capitol grounds and were assaulting police, but had not yet broken into the building.

At 1:49 p.m., Sund called the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard directly to request the assistance of guard troops at the Capitol.

At 2:10 p.m., Sund relayed that he received formal authorization from the Capitol Police Board.

At 2:13 p.m., rioters broke a Capitol window and began flooding into the building.

At 2:44 p.m., Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd fired a single shot, striking rioter Ashli Babbitt as she attempted to breach a door to the Speaker’s Lobby, where members of Congress were trying to evacuate. Babbitt subsequently died. National Guard troops did not arrive at the Capitol until 5:55 p.m.

In an email to NPR, Loudermilk’s Deputy Chief of Staff Brandon Cockerham said that the congressman’s reference to a request made “only after shots were fired” was an allusion to a later moment in the timeline, when acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller authorized the mobilization of the National Guard.

“I believe the Chairman meant to use the word ‘authorization’ instead of ‘request’ as he was alluding to the authorized mobilization of the D.C. National Guard which came at approximately 3:04 PM,” Cockerham wrote.

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/16/nx-s1-5678645/jan-6-house-gop-capitol-trump?jwsource=cl

Credit: NPR

The claim:

Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, criticized police officers who testified before the previous Jan. 6 select committee, which was led by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.

“They set out to have a highly pre-scripted hearing, designated to play on the emotions of Americans,” said Nehls. “For example, the hearing with Capitol Police officers Dunn, Gonell, Fanone, Hodges — four Trump haters who gave highly scripted and pre-planned testimonies.”

The facts:

Nehls was referring to testimony by Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell, who served with the Capitol Police, and Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges, who served with D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department.

All four officers have publicly criticized Trump, in large part because of the injuries and trauma they suffered defending the Capitol on Jan. 6.

But their politics are not as simple as Nehls suggested.

Fanone, who was dragged into the crowd and repeatedly beaten and shocked in the neck by a rioter with a Taser-style device, voted for Trump in 2016.

“I was looking for a candidate that supported law enforcement,” Fanone told NPR in an interview last year. “I regret the decision. It was clearly the wrong decision in hindsight.”

Fanone suffered a traumatic brain injury and a minor heart attack due to the assaults on Jan. 6.

Nehls’ office did not respond to NPR’s request for comment.

Three MS Now Clips of tRump admin preparing to use US military against the people to prevent the people from using their constitutional right to protest and express their will. Are we a fascist dictatorship yet?

In the video below please notice the 8:17 mark how the little Nazi Bovino leads a large group of armed masked thugs into a crowd of people expecting and demanding they move aside for the gang thugs ICE rather than the ICE thugs respect the people. They are filming it and hoping that one person will refuse to move so they can attack them as a pack and use it to claim ICE needs more authority along with the military. This is pure little person bullied on the playground with his big brothers to back him up making all the other little kids move aside for him in fear. This is the country they want to create and so far they are getting it. Hugs

Martin Luther King, Jr. Was Born in Atlanta, Georgia

on January 15th of 1929. The US, or most of it, observes a day of service and quiet celebration on the 3d Monday of January; this year that’s tomorrow. Because of the good he did while he was alive, I like to mark one or another day over the long weekend with a post about one or another (or more than one!) of the things he did.

Martin Luther King Jr. was the son of a Baptist pastor, and followed in his father’s footsteps. He also became a leader in the U.S. civil rights movement, and also was vocal and visible in the movement to halt the war in Vietnam. About five years after his Letter From A Birmingham Jail, about a year after his address to the Moblization To End The War in Vietnam, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

I’m guessing we’re all very familiar with Rev. King’s “Dream” Speech. The Letter From A Birmingham Jail found here, The address mentioned above is found here, with snippets below.

I come to participate in this significant demonstration today because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this mobilization because I cannot be a silent onlooker while evil rages. I am here because I agree with Dante, that: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.“ In these days of emotional tension, when the problems of the world are gigantic in extent and chaotic in detail, there is no greater need than for sober thinking, mature judgment, and creative dissent.

In all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war by the American people. Polls reveal more than ten million explicitly oppose the war. Additional millions cannot bring themselves to support it, and millions who do assent to it are half-hearted, confused and doubt-ridden.

Tens of thousands of our deepest thinkers in the academic and intellectual community are adamantly opposed to the war; distinguished church and theological leaders of every race and religion are morally outraged by it; and many young people in all walks of life believe it a corruption of every American value they have been taught to respect. Let no one claim there is a consensus for this war — no flag waving, no smug satisfaction with territorial conquest, no denunciation of the enemy can obscure the truth that many millions of patriotic Americans repudiate this war and refuse to take moral responsibility for it.

Nor can the fact be obscured that our nation is increasingly becoming an object of scorn around the globe. The respect we won when our course was right is rapidly being lost as even our closest allies leave our side embarrassed with our pretense that we are bearers of a moral crusade. (snip)

All of this reveals that we are in an untenable position morally and politically. We are left standing before the world glutted with wealth and power but morally constricted and impoverished. We are engaged in a war that seeks to turn the clock of history back and perpetuate white colonialism. The greatest irony and tragedy of it all is that our nation which initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of this modern world, is now cast in the mold of being an arch anti-revolutionary.

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society.

This confused war has played havoc with our domestic destinies. Despite feeble protests to the contrary, the promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam. The pursuit of this widened war has narrowed the promised dimensions of the domestic welfare programs, making the poor, white and Negro, bear the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home.

While the anti-poverty program is cautiously initiated, zealously supervised and required to be an instant success, billions are liberally expended for this ill-considered war. The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Vietnam explode at home, they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

It is estimated that we spend $322,000 for each enemy we kill, while we spend in the so-called War on Poverty in America only about $53 for each person classified as “poor.” And much of that $53 goes for salaries of people who are not poor. We have escalated the war in Vietnam and de-escalated the skirmish against poverty. It challenges the imagination to contemplate what lives we could transform if we were to cease killing. (snip)

Let us save our national honor — STOP THE BOMBING.

Let us save American lives and Vietnamese lives — STOP THE BOMBING.

Let us take a single instantaneous step to the peace table — STOP THE BOMBING.

Let us put an honorable peace on the agenda before another day passes — STOP THE BOMBING.

Let us be able to face the world with a concrete deed of genuine peace — STOP THE BOMBING.

Let our voices ring out across the land to say the American people are not vainglorious conquerors — STOP THE BOMBING.

During these days of human travail, we must not permit ourselves to lapse into pessimism. We must organize for peace. We all owe a debt to those student body presidents, Peace Corps volunteers and others who have raised their voices to question the war. I would like to urge students from colleges all over the nation to use this summer and coming summers educating and organizing communities across the nation against the war. I have already talked with students who are organizing in this vein from such schools as Harvard University on the banks of the Charles River in Massachusetts and my own Morehouse College in the red hills of Georgia. We must all speak out in a multitude of voices against this most cruel and senseless war. The thunder of our voices will be the only sound stronger than the blast of bombs and the clamor of war hysteria.

I have tried to be honest today. To be honest is to confront the truth. To be honest is to realize that the ultimate measure of man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and moments of comfort, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy. However unpleasant and inconvenient the truth may be, I believe we must expose and face it if we are to achieve a better quality of American life.

A few weeks ago, the distinguished American historian, Henry Steele Commager, told a Senate committee: “Justice Holmes used to say that the first lesson a judge had to learn was that he was not God … we do tend, perhaps more than other nations, to transform. our wars into crusades … our current involvement in Vietnam is cast, increasingly, into a moral mold … it is my feeling that we do not have the resources, material, intellectual or moral, to be at once an American power, a European power and an Asian power.”

I agree with Dr. Commanger, and I would suggest that there is, however, another kind of power that America can and should be. It is a moral power; a power harnessed to the service of peace and human beings.

All the world knows that America is a great military power. We need not be diligent in seeking to prove it. We must now show the world our moral power. It is still not too late for our beloved nation to make the proper choice. If we decide to become a moral power, we will lead mankind in transforming the jangling discords of this world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we make the right decision, we will be able to transfer our pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. This will be a glorious day. In reaching it we can fulfill the noblest of American dreams.

=====

Whew. Well, now here is a timeline of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, from the Peace & Justice History newsletter:

Since 1986, the third Monday in January has been designated a federal holiday honoring the greatness and sacrifice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A chronology:
April 4, 1968 Dr. King was assassinated. Shortly thereafter, U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) introduced legislation to create a federal holiday to commemorate Dr. King’s life and work.
January, 1973 Illinois became the first state to adopt MLK Day as a state holiday.
January, 1983 Rep. Conyers’s law was passed after 15 years
January, 1986 The United States first officially observed the federal King Day holiday.
January, 1987 Arizona Governor Evan Mecham rescinded state recognition of MLK Day as his first act in office, setting off a national boycott of the state.
January, 1993 Martin Luther King Day holiday was observed in all 50 states for the first time.

The Country Hates ICE

ICE assaults a guy for videotaping them which is LEGAL Because they are gang thugs who don’t want their abuses recorded. Their goal is threefold. Remove the nonwhites, create fear and force instant obedience to mob gang rule, and cement a cult like government that supports their gang thug activity. These are the far right white supremacist Christian nationalist Militias that for decades have threatened their neighbors with violence, and now they are sanctioned by the government, given no restraints, and turned loose on the public. Notice they attack as a pack once the first one attacks the filming bystander because the gang thug couldn’t stand to have his authority challenged. I don’t know what to do to force democratic leadership to not vote for the last funding bill unless ICE is unmasked and restrained. Something has to be done before we end up as Iran with hundreds of thousands of protestors dead. Hugs

Trump accidentally confesses why he is antagonizing Minneapolis

Miles Taylor explains how in tRump’s first term he was shocked to find the president had checks on his authority / power. Once he heard about the insurrection act he kept talking as if it gave him total power and control over the US, the kind of power he has always craved person power to rule by decree like in his personal business. Hugs

Breaking News: If Hegseth Gave an Order to “Kill Everybody,” He Must Be Removed and Prosecuted

The sad fact is the actions of the military has dragged the US again into war crimes territory. It is Kegseth’s responsibility to guild and give direction to the military as its civilian leadership. He is the one that gave the illegal orders. Hugs

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/11/28/2355963/-Breaking-News-If-Hegseth-Gave-an-Order-to-Kill-Everybody-He-Must-Be-Removed-and-Prosecuted

by thomhartmann

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday, November 28, 2025 at 5:02:31p EST

Photo from Donald Trump via Truth Social

Shocking as this moment is, none of us should pretend we weren’t warned. When Donald Trump installed Pete Hegseth — a television provocateur whose public record is soaked in belligerence, booze, and culture-war performance — as America’s Defense Secretary, the world could see exactly where it was headed.

Still, nothing prepared us for today’s Washington Post’s revelation that Hegseth personally ordered U.S. forces to “kill everybody” on a small wooden boat off the coast of Trinidad on September 2.

You’d expect rogue militias or failed–state paramilitaries to speak that way. You don’t expect it from the man running the Pentagon.

What the Post reports is almost too grotesque to absorb.

After the first U.S. missile ripped the boat apart and set it burning, commanders watched on a live drone feed as two survivors clung desperately to the charred wreckage.

They were unarmed. They were wounded. They were no threat to anyone. They were simply alive; inconveniently alive for a man who had allegedly already given the order that there be no survivors.

And so, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the strike, the Special Operations commander overseeing the operation ordered a second missile. It hit the water and blew those two men apart.

History tells us to watch out for nations that lose their moral compass in real time.

It starts when the powerful stop seeing human beings as human. It accelerates when the government itself denies any obligation to justify its killings.

And when leaders begin lying to Congress and the public to cover what they’ve done, you’re no longer looking at isolated abuses. You’re staring straight into the machinery of authoritarianism.

Instead of telling Congress that the second strike was designed to finish off wounded survivors, Pentagon officials claimed it was to “remove a navigation hazard.”

That isn’t just spin: it’s an attempt to rewrite reality.

The Post quotes Todd Huntley, a former Special Operations military lawyer now at Georgetown Law, saying exactly what any first-year law student would immediately recognize: because the United States is not legally “at war” with drug traffickers, killing the people on that boat “amounts to murder.”

Even if a war did exist, Huntley notes, the order to kill wounded, unarmed survivors “would in essence be an order to show no quarter,” which is defined under the Geneva Conventions as a war crime.

This isn’t an obscure legal debate. This is basic civilization. Armed states do not execute helpless people in the water.

And yet this is now U.S. policy. The boat strike on September 2 was not a one–off. It was the beginning of a campaign.

The Post reports that since that first attack, Trump and Hegseth have ordered more than 20 similar missile strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 80 people.

The administration insists the victims were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. But in classified briefings to Congress, Pentagon officials have not provided even one single verified name of a trafficker or gang leader they’ve killed. Lawmakers from both parties say they’ve been shown nothing beyond grainy videos of small boats being destroyed from the air.

If these men had truly been high–value cartel operatives, Trump would be parading names and photos across every rally stage in America. The silence tells its own story.

Experts warn that many of the dead may not have been traffickers at all. They may have been border–crossing migrants, subsistence fishermen, or small–scale smugglers whose crimes did not remotely justify summary execution.

International human rights groups are already calling these killings extrajudicial and illegal. Some foreign governments are asking whether the United States has effectively created a free-fire zone over parts of the Caribbean, and several have limited intelligence sharing with us for fear of being complicit in prosecutable war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This, too, has been part of the authoritarian playbook since ancient times.

Pick a foreign or criminal “other,” paint them as subhuman monsters, and then declare that the normal laws of war, morality, and basic decency no longer apply.

For years, right-wing media has been hyping Tren de Aragua as a kind of supercharged successor to MS-13, just as Trump once used MS-13 as a bludgeon to justify abuses at home.

The fact that the administration has produced no evidence for its claims isn’t a bug: it’s the point. When the government fabricates an omnipresent threat, it gives itself permission to kill whoever it wants.

This may also explain the ferocity with which Hegseth and Trump went after Democratic lawmakers last week when they reminded U.S. service members that they are duty-bound to disobey illegal orders.

Those officers weren’t being dramatic: they were issuing a warning grounded in fresh blood. And Hegseth’s and Trump’s panicked rage — calling for the death penalty for six members of Congress, including a decorated war hero and a CIA officer — now makes perfect sense: he knows perfectly well what he’s already ordered.

The strike on September 2 is not just a policy failure; it’s a moral collapse. If the Post’s reporting is accurate — and multiple congressional offices say it is consistent with what whistleblowers have told them — then the United States has engaged in the deliberate killing of wounded, unarmed men floating in the sea.

That is the kind of conduct that topples governments, triggers war-crimes investigations, and leaves scars on nations for generations.

Nobody elected Donald Trump or Pete Hegseth to serve as judge, jury, and executioner for impoverished people in wooden boats. Nobody gave them the authority to murder suspects without trial. And nobody gave them the right to lie to Congress about it.

Congress must not let this pass. These allegations demand immediate public hearings, subpoena power, and full investigative authority.

If Hegseth gave an order to “kill everybody,” he must be removed and prosecuted.

If U.S. commanders falsified reports to mislead Congress and the public, they must be held accountable.

And if Donald Trump approved or encouraged these actions, then impeachment and criminal referral are not optional: they’re required to defend the rule of law.

America doesn’t have many chances left to prove to the world, and to ourselves, that we still believe in the value of human life and the restraints of democratic power. This is one of them.

Witnessing the Gaza Genocide | Anthony Aguilar | TMR

Trump push to politicize US military ‘reminiscent of Stalin’, top general warns

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/05/trump-us-military-hegseth-stalin

Paul Eaton in Baghdad in June 2004. Eaton spent 37 years in active service. Photograph: Brent Stirton/Getty Images

Donald Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, are mounting an aggressive push to politicise the top ranks of the US military – a push that smacks of Stalinism and could take years to repair, the former infantry chief who trained troops to invade Iraq has warned.

Maj Gen Paul Eaton has sounded the alarm, saying in an interview with the Guardian that the effort to bend the higher echelons of the military to the US president’s will was unparalleled in recent history and could have long-term dire consequences. He warned that both the reputation and efficiency of the world’s most powerful fighting force was in the balance.

“There is an active effort to politicise the armed forces,” Eaton said. “Once you infect the body, the cure may be very difficult and painful for presidents downstream.”

He added that the actions of Trump and his chosen head of the Pentagon were putting the standing of the military as an independent entity, free from party politics, at risk. “As the phrase goes, reputation is built a drop at a time and emptied in buckets.”

Eaton, 75, has spent his entire life in military circles, including 37 years in active service. His father was an air force pilot whose B-57 bomber was shot down over Laos in 1969, when Eaton was 18.

Air force Col Norman Eaton’s remains were found and identified in 2006.

Eaton himself trained at West Point, the US military academy in New York that trains commissioned officers, graduating soon after the end of the Vietnam war. He rose through the ranks of the US army to infantry chief and then, after the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 was completed, was sent to that country to rebuild the Iraqi armed forces.

In recent years Eaton has been a sharp critic of Trump’s manipulation of military structures. In the summer of 2024 he participated in war games conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice thinktank, that sought to anticipate the then Republican nominee Trump’s most dangerous authoritarian moves were he to return to the White House.

Many of the actions predicted in those tabletop exercises – including politicisation of the military and other key government institutions, and deployment of the national guard into Democratic-controlled cities – have already come to pass under Trump’s second presidency.

In Eaton’s analysis, Trump’s first step towards compromising military independence was the act of appointing Hegseth as secretary of defense. The former Fox & Friends host had been an adviser to Trump and had supported his first presidential run in 2016.

Once you infect the body, the cure may be very difficult and painful for presidents downstream

Maj Gen Paul Eaton

“Hegseth not only swears loyalty to Trump, he swears fealty to Trump – whereas the military swears an oath to the constitution,” Eaton said.

Soon after Hegseth was ensconced in the Pentagon the firings began. Within a week of Trump’s inauguration the military inspector general who acted as an independent watchdog was dismissed, followed by the top military lawyers (judge advocates general) who advise on the laws of armed conflict.

Out, too, went the top officers. Charles Brown, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, was ousted in February and replaced by Lt Gen Dan Caine who Trump claimed had express his love for the president and would “kill for him” (Caine denied ever saying such things). The top officers in the navy and air force were ditched in quick succession.

The Pentagon purge sent a clear and chilling message that reverberated throughout the military services, Eaton said. “Toe the line, or we will fire you. You’re in a different world now. This is Trump’s world, and by God, this is what we’re going to do.”

The dismissals also sowed doubt throughout the ranks. Would senior officers kowtow to Trump and his defense secretary? Or would they stand up for following the military rules of engagement?

Eaton said the effect reminded him of Joseph Stalin’s 1940s purges of the top officers in Soviet forces. “Stalin killed a lot of the best and brightest of the military leadership, and then inserted political commissars into the units. The doubt that swept the armed forces of the Soviet Union is reminiscent of today – they are not killing these men and women, but they are removing them from positions of authority with similar impact.”

The end result, Eaton said, was that “you’ve got a 1940s Stalin problem inside the American military right now”.

The furor over the lethal US military strikes on boats in Latin American waters is for Eaton a sign of the damage that is being wrought. The administration claims the strikes have been targeted on “narco-terrorists” who are in “armed conflict” with the US by bringing illegal drugs into the country.

The first of more than 20 strikes that have occurred took place on 2 September. It involved a controversial second strike that killed two survivors who had been clinging to the bombed wreck of the boat.

The Washington Post revealed that Hegseth had given an order to “kill everybody”. Under the Department of Defense manual on the laws of war, it is forbidden to order that every combatant must be killed irrespective of whether they pose a threat.

Eaton has no doubts about the illegality of the 2 September second strike. “It was either a war crime or a murder. So we have a real problem here. This decision looks a whole lot like a U-boat commander machine gunning victims in the water during world war two.”

Hegseth sought to drive home the new way of doing things in a bizarre summit in September in which he gathered military commanders to Quantico in Virginia. He berated them about so-called wokeness, liberal thinking, and the presence of “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon”.

Anyone in the room who disagreed with him was encouraged to resign.

For Eaton, the meeting was “disgusting” and “antithetical to the US military. The senior leadership of our armed forces are sober people who do not speak in terms of fatness or ‘kill them all’ or ‘the gloves are off’.”

Looking ahead to 2026, Eaton is profoundly concerned that the violations of rules of war that have arguably been committed by the Pentagon outside US territory might soon become a reality domestically. The Trump administration has federalised national guard troops and sent them into numerous cities against the wishes of Democratic mayors and state governors.

The presence of national guard soldiers in Los Angeles, Washington DC, the Chicago area and other locations has been challenged in federal courts, where cases continue to play out.

In October Eaton took part in a delegation that included the organisation Vote Vets, to which he acts as an adviser, to see the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker. The retired two-star general said they counseled Pritzker to stand firm in countering troop deployment to Chicago.

“We told him: you have a requirement to protect your citizens from federal assault.”

Eaton’s biggest fear is at some point a dramatic clash of forces might take place, with the federalised national guard facing off against state and local police. He conjured up the imaginary scenario of the Texas national guard being federalised – ie ordered out of state control into national control – and imported into Baltimore, Maryland, contrary to the city and state’s wishes.

“What could go wrong?” Eaton said. “You can very easily see an escalation in which both sides think they are right, obeying orders that they believe were given legally.”

Sooner or later, he warned, a “memorable event” was likely to take place. “There are going to be people getting hurt who really don’t need to get hurt.”