The Civilian-Military Relationship (with Mark Hertling)

December 13, 2025·53 min·4 clips

Sarah Longwell explores how the American military became a political football in Trump's second term.

The setup is blunt. Longwell starts with the idea that the American military, once the country's most trusted institution, has become a political football in the second Trump administration. The examples come fast: a parade in the nation's capital that was sort of for the president's birthday, National Guard deployments in major cities, a renamed Department of War, and possible war crimes involving boats in Venezuela. Put together, they point to a boundary problem. Then the voters come in, and the episode gets sharper. One voter talks about traveling to McAllen, Texas, near the border, and seeing National Guard members across the city. The details are small, which is why they land. Guardsmen from Austin and San Antonio are described as securing the border while also acting more like police inside the city. The checkpoint story sticks. The voter says people are asked where they are headed, while the immigration question sits there awkwardly, present but not quite spoken. Longwell is not using the clip as background noise. She is showing how military presence can change normal civic life before anyone declares some dramatic crisis. The voter is not anti-police, either. He wants more police funding, more hiring, and better police capacity. He just does not want the military doing that job. That distinction matters. It moves the conversation past order versus disorder and into the messier question of which institutions should do which work. Washington, D.C., makes the contradiction harder to dodge. Another voter says the National Guard creates chaos in the capital, with constant protesting, violence, and confusion about what is actually happening. The fear is concrete: once these deployments become normal, they could tighten into a chokehold over an area or region. Longwell then pivots to more MAGA-type voters, tracking not only policy reaction but tolerance for military power inside the coalition. General Hertling gives the ending its weight. His point is that America has stopped acting like the proverbial shining city on the hill, not because anyone else is perfect, but because the country has become withdrawn and angry.

As heard by us

A sober look at what happens when the military gets dragged into political theater.

Sarah Longwell uses the military as a pressure point for the current political order. The episode keeps asking what happens when an institution built for discipline gets pulled into border work, presidential imagery, and partisan habit.

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Want a clear-eyed take on military politics without the usual noise?

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