President Donald Trump has signaled that he is going to step back from threats he’s made concerning the deployment of federal troops to states that are refusing to use the military to quell riots and violent protests, but not before leaders in the military issued sharp rebukes for his position on the matter. Trump spoke with with former White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Newsmax TV Wednesday saying, “I don’t think we’ll have to,” referring, of course, to the invoking of the Insurrection Act, which would dispatch active-duty military troops on the streets to help reign in the current chaos. “We have very strong powers to do it. The National Guard is customary, and we have a very powerful National Guard, over 300,000 men and women, and we can do pretty much whatever we want as far as that,” the president said. “But as far as going beyond that, sure, if it was necessary.” via The Washington Examiner: On a leaked call Monday, Trump called governors “weak” and urged them, with the backing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, to call up more National Guard members to quell protests in response to the death of George Floyd in police custody. “If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” he said. Esper went on to say on Wednesday morning that the military lexicon was inappropriate. “I’ve always believed and continue to believe that the National Guard is best suited for performing domestic support to civil authorities in these situations,” Esper stated. “I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.” The former National Guardsman…

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham weighed in on some rather brutal comments made by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis about President Donald Trump, stating that he was “buying into a narrative” after slamming the president for his handling of the riots and protests in light of the death of George Floyd. Graham made an appearance on Fox & Friends where he said that Mattis isn’t understanding, despite the several years he spent serving in his administration, that Trump is the victim of a political blame game. “The one thing I would tell Gen. Mattis is that you don’t quite understand that from the time President Trump wakes up until he goes to bed, there’s an effort to destroy his presidency. … Nobody wants to send active-duty troops into American cities unless they are invited and unless they are absolutely necessary,” Graham said during the interview. Here’s more from The Washington Examiner: “But I would say that Gov. Cuomo should have called out the National Guard early on, and I would ask Gen. Mattis to look at the behavior of the politicians in these cities and see if you can find fault with them,” he said, referring to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “It is so fashionable to blame President Trump for every wrong in America, and he can be a handful, and can he do better? Yes. But the problems we have in America today weren’t caused by Donald Trump, and hopefully, he can help the nation heal some of these problems.” Mattis claimed that Trump was ordering the National Guard to “violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens” so that the president could have a “bizarre photo op” in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House on Monday. Trump responded to Mattis’s condemnation by tweeting,…