Portrayals of Legitimacy, Rhetoric, and Security : Trump’s Framing of the 2018-2021 & 2025 National Guard Deployments

Checks and balances are essential to democratic stability, preventing any branch from exceeding its authority; when they fail, executive power becomes vulnerable to partisan abuse. The United States has long symbolized constitutional stability, yet recent developments show that democratic erosion is possible even in well-established democracies. Since taking office in 2025, Donald Trump has tested the limits of presidential authority, including efforts to deploy the National Guard to cities such as Los Angeles, Washington DC, Portland, Chicago, and Memphis. Existing research analyzes Trump through securitization and framing rhetoric but largely ignores how the National Guard itself functioned as a tool of securitization within the Trump administration as a whole. This study explores the pattern of rhetoric surrounding the justification of deployments of the National Guard in Trump’s two presidential terms analyzed through Ole Wæver’s (1995) securitization theory and Robert Entman’s (1993) framing theory. The study finds that while overall deployment levels of the National Guard were consistent with historical precedent, the first Trump administration framed the deployments through highly politicized narratives. The second Trump administration has so far intensified both its rhetoric and its willingness to commandeer the National Guard, including war framed threats to Democratic-led cities. By situating the Trump administration within global context, this thesis offers insight within democratic fragilities with international significance due to the broad impact of US policy.