'Abhorrent': Retired general says Trump’s 'specialized units' look like 'Germany in the 1930s'

25 August

CNN host Brianna Keilar and Major General Randy Manner (Ret.) on CNN on August 25, 2025 (Image: Screengrab via CNN / YouTube)

President Donald Trump is deploying National Guard troops across the United States to deal with "public order issues," and one former general is calling it a dark omen for the future.

During a Monday interview with CNN host Brianna Keilar, U.S. Army Major General Randy Manner (Ret.), who is a former acting vice chief of the National Guard bureau, said that while Trump's authority to deploy guardsmen is legal, the way in which it's being done is fundamentally antithetical to the traditional role of the military. Manner asserted that Trump's use of the National Guard was being done to intentionally intimidate populations of predominantly Democratic cities and states, and likened it to Germany prior to World War II.

"So the idea of creating specialized units, which, by the way, it's the language that matters. Essentially what the president is doing, through the secretary of defense, is creating units, official military units to, quite frankly ... watch the American people," Manner said. "And that's the thing that is absolutely abhorrent. It reminds me so much of what happened in Germany in the 1930s."

Manner went on to argue that Trump specifically wanted armed and uniformed troops in the streets of American cities "as a show of force to anybody who opposes him." He then suggested that if Trump's intention was to restore "law and order," he would restore funding for community-based policing initiatives that were cut in his massive tax and spending bill signed earlier this summer.

"The idea of sending out — again — photo-op opportunities with MRAPs and heavily armored vehicles to sit on our streets outside of national monuments and so on, is absolutely just for the optics," the retired general said. "I think this is very disconcerting because we are not a nation that is run by the military."

Keilar also commented on the purported law enforcement element of the recent deployment, pointing out that the cities with the highest homicide rate per capita were in states with Republican governors like Jackson, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; St. Louis, Missouri; Shreveport, Louisiana and Memphis, Tennessee. Manner opined that the fact that Trump is only focusing on Democratic-run states proves that the deployments are inherently political in nature.

"It is all about intimidating the people and the voters in the blue areas, the blue cities, the mayors, the governors that do not support his policies," he said. "It's extremely clear that while this is legal action, he's using it in that manner."

Watch the full segment below, or by clicking this link.

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