David Mastio: Trump didn't have power to deploy National Guard, then magically he did

David Mastio, The Kansas City Star on Aug 29, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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President Donald Trump has a tendency to make those who take him at his word look like clowns. As Trump teases — some reporting says “prepares” — to start sending federalized National Guard troops into Democrat-run cities with crime problems, one of his own arguments is starting to look a little foolish.

About the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Trump said to Fox News’ Sean Hannity: “I requested … I definitely gave the number of 10,000 National Guardsmen, and (said), ‘I think you should have 10,000 of the National Guard ready.’ They took that number. From what I understand, they gave it to the people at the Capitol, which is controlled by (then-House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi. And I heard they rejected it because they didn’t think it would look good. So, you know, that was a big mistake.”

Now, it was always obvious that this was a goofy argument. There is only one person who has the power to say yes or no to deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C. That is the president. It is the federal city, after all. That is why there are troops on the ground there now, despite opposition from local officials.

But millions of people believe Pelosi blocked the deployment of National Guardsmen because Trump has said it at least a half-dozen times on TV and in writing along with a chorus of his other backers. One of the tells that this is bogus is that the details change depending on who is telling the story. Sometimes it is 20,000 troops Trump requested, and sometimes then-Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer joins Pelosi in rejecting National Guard protection.

Before Trump was elected a second time, one man made a cottage industry of peddling this story to anyone who would listen: Kash Patel, now director of Trump’s FBI. Patel said he was a witness to the order and even wrote about it for a boot-licking Trumpist journal called The Federalist.

“I was serving as the chief of staff for the Department of Defense on Jan. 6, 2021.” Patel wrote. “The deployment of the National Guard requires presidential authorization, which Trump gave days before Jan. 6 in the Oval Office, where I was present. It also requires a request from local governing authorities, including D.C. Mayor Bowser and Capitol Police, who report to the speaker of the House.

“For years, I have testified under oath, in the media, and everywhere in between that Pelosi and Bowser were responsible for not requesting the National Guard on Jan. 6 after President Trump constitutionally authorized deploying the guard,” he continues, citing a letter from them as proof.

The only thing is the letter he links to is not from Pelosi and the mayor of D.C. It is just from the mayor. Moreover, it does not refuse to authorize the deployment of federal law enforcement or the National Guard, it requests “notification to and consultation with” the D.C. police before such action is taken.

That’s not the only problem with Patel’s memory. The other guy in the room with him at the White House that day, his boss acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, says Trump didn’t actually authorize the deployment of the National Guard at that meeting. Neither does the Department of Defense after-action review of events before and after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Now, after years of arguing that he didn’t have the power to deploy National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., to thwart an attack on Congress without the support of other federal officials and the local mayor, Trump is now threatening to deploy the National Guard into Democratic cities to fight street crime without the support of the local mayors or even the states’ governors, who are nominally in charge of their states’ National Guards.

The turnabout leaves those who bought Trump’s argument looking like fools. And it, once again, reveals the truth about Trump’s relationship with the facts: He’s perfectly willing to change them to suit the needs of the moment without any regard for what he said in the past.

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David Mastio is a national opinion columnist for McClatchy and The Kansas City Star.

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