Gov. Paul LePage's call for military help wasn't what he meant to say

In the midst of a diatribe against growing anger in the country, Gov. Paul LePage told a radio interviewer that “we’re developing an internal domestic problem” and then appeared to say that he may have to deploy the military in response.

But in his mangled phrasing to the host for Auburn radio station Z105.5’s Breakfast Club, LePage’s words were misleading, his communications director said Thursday.

LePage only meant to say he had spoken to the National Guard in the morning at an interfaith prayer breakfast about his concerns with the rising incivility in Washington, D.C., said Peter Steele, his aide.

Steele said there “are no plans to deploy the Guard to deal with the anger in America. They have no role in dealing with that.”

In an interview slated to air at 7 a.m. Friday with host Matt Boutwell, LePage warned that the growing divisions and lack of civility in America have him worried.

“I just think that if that’s where our country is headed, our government is going to fail,” LePage said.

The governor told Boutwell, who calls himself Matty B on air, that he spoke with the military for a Day of Prayer event and mentioned they’re typically deployed to go to war and fight terror.

Then he added, “I think we’re developing an internal domestic problem that I’m told, that I think that the military, I’m deploying them. I’m asking the National Guard to help us with. And that is the anger in our country.”

“There is so much anger going on,” LePage said.

During a trip to the nation’s capital recently, he said, it hit home harder than ever before.

“Without knowing who was asking the questions, without looking at their names, you could tell a Democrat from a Republican,” he said. “The Republicans are, quite frankly, disrespectful to the Democrats on the panel. And the Democrats are disrespectful, enormously disrespectful, to my position as a governor.”

“And I just think that if that’s where our country is headed, our government is going to fail,” LePage said. “We’ll never make America great again if that’s the attitude we have in Washington.”

“So I’m very, very concerned about the anger — the anger in Washington, the anger on the streets, where if you go and try to speak, people will try to drown you out and call you every vile name in the world,” the governor said.

“They just won’t give you the normal respect that the office deserves,” LePage said.

He said he’s not suggesting people can’t disagree on policy.

Instead, he said, he’s upset that some “scream and holler and won’t let somebody even get on stage and say a word.”

“And the disrespect that I saw in Washington this week is just beyond anything that I ever expected,” the governor said.