From a September 30 "Washington Post" column by David Ignatius: "There was a broader conceptual failure in Tuesday’s presentations (at Quantico). Trump focused repeatedly on using the military to fight the “enemy from within,” by which he seemed to mean illegal immigrants, and perhaps also the “radical left lunatics” who might sympathize with their plight. Using the military for domestic law enforcement is illegal under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. But beyond that, it’s just dumb at a time when Russia and China pose a growing military threat to the United States.

The military commanders in Trump’s audience are obliged to obey a commander in chief’s orders — so long as they are legal. What did those senior officers think as Trump explained to them his rules of engagement for domestic protest — “They spit, we hit” — and his repeated claims that “we’re under invasion from within”? Hopefully, they’ll seek good legal advice about what constitutes a proper order for deployments on U.S. soil."