In a stunning admission that has sent shockwaves through the political landscape, CNN panelist and longtime anti-Trump figure Jonah Goldberg articulated a deeply unsettling hypothetical. During a panel discussion, Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, openly contemplated the possibility of a future Democratic administration weaponizing the military against American citizens. This chilling idea, presented under the guise of a rhetorical argument, reveals the very real authoritarian impulses that conservatives have long warned fester within the progressive left.
Goldberg’s comments emerged from a conversation about violent crime in major cities exclusively run by Democrat leadership. He attempted to draw a false equivalence between President Donald Trump’s considered use of federal resources to restore order and protect citizens in lawless jurisdictions and a potential Democratic president’s desire to confiscate constitutionally protected private property. The panel was discussing Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s recent executive order, a desperate move intended to block federal assistance from addressing his city’s rampant, out-of-control crime crisis.
It was in this context that Goldberg laid bare a progressive fantasy. He framed his alarming suggestion not as a warning of overreach he would oppose, but as a logical precedent he seemed to endorse, asking, “What is to stop—given the precedent that Donald Trump is setting—what is to stop a Democrat, a Governor Pritzker, a Governor Newsom, from saying, ‘We have a gun crisis in America, just as legitimate on the facts and arguments as a crime crisis, and we’re going to send the National Guard into states to go get their guns’?”
This statement is a testament to the liberal media’s relentless and dishonest narrative. Instead of honestly debating the merits of using available federal tools to save lives in cities besieged by violence, a CNN panel immediately pivots to a dystopian, fear-mongering scenario. They reveal their hand by illustrating that their primary objection is not to the principle of federal power itself, but to who wields that power and for what purpose. For them, a strong federal response to protect citizens is “tyranny” when proposed by President Trump, but it becomes a tantalizing option for their own side to violate the Second Amendment.
President Trump’s actions are squarely focused on upholding law and order, a fundamental duty of the executive branch. His administration’s consideration of deploying resources to Chicago is a direct response to the pleas of citizens abandoned by their local leaders. It is about supporting communities and assisting overwhelmed local authorities, not about infringing upon the sacred rights of law-abiding Americans. The President seeks to confront criminal elements, not to disarm peaceful citizens.
CNN is now floating the idea that the next Democratic President will order the military to go door-to-door to confiscate firearms from law-abiding Americans.
I sincerely hope they never get that stupid.
That's what you would call the start of our second Civil War. pic.twitter.com/PdFVwzErqg
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) September 2, 2025
The liberal media’s eagerness to float the idea of door-to-door gun confiscation is a deliberate smear tactic designed to taint President Trump’s lawful and necessary crime-fighting proposals. It is a classic projection, where the left accuses their opponents of the very authoritarianism they themselves dream of enacting. This kind of rhetoric is dangerously irresponsible and serves only to further divide the nation and stoke unwarranted fear.