MSNBC aired a segment that treated a lawful military deployment as if it were proof that the president wants a private army. The network’s guests suggested President Donald Trump could order U.S. forces to kill Americans on a whim, tied to a recent move sending a carrier strike group south to pressure Venezuela and target transnational cartels. The claim sparked sharp pushback from conservatives and left a lot of viewers asking whether the network was reporting or performing.
On Deadline: White House, host Alicia Menendez raised alarm over the Pentagon decision to send the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to the U.S. Southern Command for counter-cartel operations. The deployment is framed by the administration as a direct national security response to sophisticated smuggling and rising cartel violence across the hemisphere. That context mattered little to the show, which quickly moved from facts to speculative fear.
Menendez pushed a long, alarming line of questioning that framed Trump’s legal authorities as monstrous. “Even the fact that there are officers who are having that conversation tells you about the five-alarm fire that we are in, because the Trump administration claims they can lawfully kill people simply because they are suspected of drug trafficking like enemy troops, instead of arresting them for prosecution. Does that match your understanding of the law?” she asked, setting the stage for more dramatic claims.
The guest Tom Nichols doubled down on the network’s worst-case framing, rejecting proposed legal justifications in broad strokes. “No, not American law and not international treaties to which we are a signatory,” Nichols said, dismissing legal nuance. He then added a line that became the segment’s headline sound bite: “The American president has said, ‘I can point the US military any place I want and kill anyone I want.’ That eventually is going to become a principle in the domestic use of the military.”
Nichols went further, arguing this was part of a pattern of normalizing extraordinary uses of force for political ends. “He is acclimating people to the notion that the military is his private army unconstrained by law, unconstrained by norms, unconstrained by American traditions. I don’t really think this has anything to do with drugs,” he said, tying the deployment to imagined political motives. “Sometimes I wonder how far he’s going to go to stop the release of the Epstein files and how many distractions he’s going to throw at us.”
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Later in the same segment Nichols escalated the rhetoric, suggesting the administration’s moves are more about political theater than security. “This is about getting out from under his already dismal record, his record low approval ratings, his struggling with a scandal, and he is now saying, ‘I am going to acclimate the American public to the use of military force anywhere I deem it appropriate under any circumstances,’” Nichols noted. He concluded with another sweeping hypothetical: “The president may be thinking, ‘I may well have us in a war by the time the elections roll around, which will enable me to say any opposition to me and my party is basically treason and unpatriotic.’”
That framing ignores real threats and the limits built into American command authority and law. Polling shows many voters think the president is following through on promises about border security and countering cartels, a point the segment brushed aside. Conservatives argue the focus should be on how to stop drugs, weapons, and violence, not on inflaming fears about constitutional collapse.
Menendez closed by agreeing with Nichols’ speculative leap. “Tom Nichols, your brain and my brain have gone to the exact same place,” she said, signaling the show had moved from reporting into groupthink. Meanwhile, drug traffickers have been adapting with commercial ships, low-flying aircraft, and smaller maritime shipments, prompting the administration to increase naval patrols, send bombers near Venezuelan airspace, designate certain cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and impose targeted sanctions in the region.
Public debate about the proper limits of military power is healthy and necessary, but caricaturing a tactical deployment as evidence of a president plotting domestic murder is irresponsible. Conservative readers will note that law, oversight, and Congress remain in place to check misuse of force, and national security moves aimed at cartels deserve scrutiny on their merits, not theatrical condemnation. The conversation should focus on real threats, legal boundaries, and holding political media accountable for stoking baseless panic.
