All It Takes Is One Mistake: Worries Over Plan to Send National Guard to Border

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

WASHINGTON — A little over a year ago, when news surfaced of a Trump administration memo that proposed mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants at the southern border, a White House spokesman quickly denounced the reports as “irresponsible.”

“That is 100 percent not true,” Sean Spicer, the press secretary at the time, told reporters aboard Air Force One. “There is no effort at all to round up, to utilize the National Guard to round up illegal immigrants.”

At the Pentagon, where officials had greeted the news grimly, there were sighs of relief: Military leaders have long opposed sending National Guard troops to the border.

“There is a significant opportunity cost,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star admiral who commanded United States forces in Europe and Latin America, adding that troops sent to the border with Mexico — ostensibly an American ally — would “miss important training opportunities for their real primary mission — combat.”

But the idea that Mr. Spicer called inconceivable a year ago is back in play.

On Wednesday, White House officials said that President Trump planned to mobilize the National Guard to the southern border. The announcement came a day after Mr. Trump surprised some of his top advisers by saying that he wanted to send in the military to do what the immigration authorities, in his view, could not: secure the border from what he characterized as a growing threat of unauthorized immigrants, drugs and crime from Central America.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/‘all-it-takes-is-one-mistake’-worries-over-plan-to-send-national-guard-to-border/ar-AAvtKZp?li=BBnb7Kz

[MichMary]

1. Has a number been mentioned?

100,000 seems like a lot. Both Bush and Obama sent troops to the border, but I think both of them sent fewer than 2,000.

[gratuitous]

2. I've seen reports that Bush deployed 6,000 and Obama about 2,000

This looks like another classic Trump fuck up, ordering a deployment he's not authorized to make*, grabbing a bunch of headlines, throwing a whole bunch of people into a panic, and then a day or two later when reality takes hold again, saying he didn't mean what he plainly said.

*While the president can order mobilization of National Guard forces, there are certain conditions precedent in the statute, and there is no indication that Trump has jumped through the procedural hoops to declare an emergency.

[MichMary]

4. Trump . . .

What a clustf***.

I just shake my head. How could that many people have been so stupid?

[haele]

5. Apparently it was on a White House memo.

It might have been a typo - 100,000 instead of 1,000 - as the staff was used to just adding an extra zero or two to item on most of their official reports.
As in, $31,000 instead of the usual $3,100 for a standard office entertainment dining set replacement...
They know their boss loves big numbers - the bigger, the more beautiful...

Haele

[MichMary]

6. Yikes.

I wonder if he has even considered the logistics of moving, feeding, and sheltering that many people.

If he could actually call up the guard, would the funding have to come out of the state NG budgets?

[Lee-Lee]

3. There have been troops working these roles on the border since the 90s

It’s not anything new.

Just the size of it may be.

[NutmegYankee]

7. And all they did was kill an American teenager herding goats.

Real protective that was.