'Sobering': Retired Marine Corps pilot says she took part in war games to prep for Trump
Former Marine Corps fighter pilot Amy McGrath took part in "war games" with the Veterans for Responsible Leadership (a 527 Super PAC) earlier this year for situations that might now come to pass.
The group worked through the first days of Donald Trump's new presidency using the policies he has indicated he plans to implement, The Atlantic reported at the time.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, McGrath specifically addressed the difficult questions the military would be presented with upon being tasked to round up immigrants and deport them.
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"Many of us did some exercises on what Trump would do on the first day, and it was very, very sobering," McGrath said about the war games that happened in March.
"It will rip the military apart because it's not in our nature to turn our forces. We're not trained for it. Our guns should not be turned on to American citizens and those people living here," continued McGrath, who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2020 against Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
She went on to say that putting the military in charge of this will make it difficult for those trained to shoot at an enemy.
"The fact of the matter is there aren't enough border patrol agents to do what Trump wants," she began, echoing what Trump's "border czar" Tom Homan said in an interview. "You would have to use the military..."
The problem with that, McGrath said, is that "a core tenet of American democracy is that we don't use our military against American civilians. You know, a part of this is if you're using the U.S. military to go in and take out potentially family members from U.S. citizens, it's a huge problem."
She asked what happens if the American families of the immigrants resist in any way.
"Does the U.S. military then fire upon our own citizens? Does the U.S. military fire upon civilians if there's resistance? The United States military should never be used like a Gestapo," said McGrath. "And that is where we're headed."
After the exercise, McGrath said, “As veterans, we are people who can uniquely communicate to the American public how important the Constitution is because we took an oath to defend it."
See the conversation in the video below or at the link here.
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