after

The American president is, after all, the commander in chief of the world’s most formidable fighting machine, and the figure ultimately responsible for the nation’s safety and security.

During his campaign, Trump flirted with those boundaries, repeatedly musing about using the military to go after domestic political opponents, or to aid in mass deportations of illegal immigrants.

In the just-ended campaign, Trump also hammered the outgoing administration — first President Biden, and then Vice President Kamala Harris when she took up the fight after Biden dropped out — over the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2022 after the Taliban takeover, insisting that those who oversaw the pullout should have been fired.

In a 2021 essay, she cited Trump’s “intensive efforts to chip away at the apolitical nature of the American military” as a means of using the armed forces to help him try to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.

Gaetz, a Florida congressman who resigned from the House hours after Trump announced that he would nominate him to run the Justice Department, orchestrated McCarthy’s ouster as speaker last year.