Some Republicans Opposed Using Troops Against Protests in 2020. Now They’re Marching in Lockstep.

When President Donald Trump threatened to send troops against the Black Lives Matter movement five years ago, some members of his own party offered guarded criticisms.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., then serving as the majority whip, said he opposed using the military.

“I would prefer that these things be handled by the state and local authorities,” he said. “You want to de-escalate, rather than escalate.”

Related

Trump Deploys Marines to a “Manufactured Crisis,” Defense Official Says

Over the past week, however, Thune has been one of many Republican leaders endorsing Trump’s call to send U.S. Marines to Los Angeles amid the anti-ICE protests as deportation operations expanded. The near-unanimous chorus is a sign of how thoroughly Trump has consolidated his grip on Republicans — and how fiercely the party’s base turned against protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

Although the party was split five years ago, some Republicans at the time rejected Trump’s inflammatory calls for military force.

Most Read

Did Trump Just Confess to Attacking Venezuela?

Nick Turse

Dan Goldman Supported Warrantless Spying on Americans. Now His Primary Opponent Is Hitting Him for It.

Matt Sledge

My Quest to Make the Pentagon Care About the Crimes It Covered Up

Nick Turse

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump tweeted on May 29, 2020. Days later, as federal police tear-gassed protesters outside the White House, Trump said in a Rose Garden address that governors should “dominate the streets” with the National Guard — or he would “deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”

The tear-gassing episode — where Trump was accused of using force so that he could stage a photo op in the area — drew condemnations from several Republicans in the Senate, including then-Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.

“If your question is, ‘Should you use tear gas to clear a path so the president can go have a photo op?’ the answer is no,” Scott said soon after. (An Interior Department probe later cleared Trump of using tear gas to set up his photo op.)

The caution was far from unanimous among Republicans: There were always supporters of Trump’s military talk, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

“The military has been called up a number of times to defend the nation. The natural route is to use the National Guard. That is appropriate. If necessary, the military should be used and there is a long tradition of that,” Cruz said in June 2020.

Now, five months into his second term, Trump has a far firmer grip on the Republican Party, and the critiques of his tough talk have been harder to find.

Thune, now the Senate majority leader, gave unequivocal support for Trump’s decision to send in troops.

“At the end of the day, it’s about preventing chaos and preserving law and order,” Thune said Wednesday.

Other Republicans have used Trump’s decision to declare they were right all along about deploying troops on protesters.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who wrote a controversial New York Times op-ed in 2020 calling for Trump to “Send in the Troops,” wrote a follow-up this week in the Wall Street Journal titled “Send In the Troops, for Real.”

Against Trump’s nearly unprecedented decision to take over the California National Guard, and then send in Marines, only a handful of prominent Republicans have expressed reservations.

One of them was Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. Sometimes thought of as a centrist, but rarely breaking with her party on votes, Collins said she opposed using the Marines against protests — but was fine with sending in the National Guard.

“I would draw a distinction between the use of the National Guard and the use of the Marines,” she said earlier this week. “Active-duty forces are generally not to be involved in domestic law enforcement operations.”