In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s humiliating public break-up with his billionaire ally Elon Musk, and Musk’s tweeted accusation that Trump refuses to release the Epstein files because he’s in them, and thus a pedophile, the president appeared wounded, deflated, and in jeopardy of seeing the world’s richest man (and the GOP’s biggest financial donor) fracture his political coalition. As nervous Republicans pleaded with the two megalomaniacs to reconcile to avoid further damage, Trump needed a diversion, something to rally his supporters and stem the bleeding.
For Trump, then, the protests in LA were a godsend.
Thus, the White House has rapidly turned its focus to what it considers to be a far more auspicious issue, deploying a massive and entirely unnecessary show of military force in response to scattered protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles, further inflaming an already tense and highly combustible situation there. Killing two birds with one stone, Trump has transformed the unhappy narrative, even as he expands his own power precipitously.
In what is a stunning abuse of presidential power, Trump has now federalized the California National Guard and deployed a battalion of Marines into LA to crush what had been mostly peaceful protests against the administration’s brutal immigration raids, as thuggish ICE agents comb through American communities in a widening dragnet to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. Predictably, this merely galvanized protesters and further exacerbated the situation on the ground, as Trump deliberately pours accelerant on the fire he created in an effort to create a blazing inferno on American streets.
As I write, the protests are quickly spreading to other cities, as the American people rise up not only against Trump’s vicious immigration policies, but also America’s rapid slide into unbridled authoritarianism, blatant kleptocracy, and the birth of a personalist dictatorship.
Incredibly, it seems we are only inches away from the declaration of martial law in the United States, as heavily armed soldiers in tactical gear occupy America’s second largest city on behalf of a lawless president intent on broadening his own power and smothering any hint of political opposition. It’s a deeply sobering moment, as this administration openly contemplates invoking the Insurrection Act, and unleashing the American military on the American people themselves.
It’s the kind of worst case scenario for our democracy that many of us have been warning about for years. It seems the emergency is finally here, and it certainly isn’t protesters exercising their right to free speech. It’s the collapse of constitutional democracy in America, and the rise of a strongman who is above the law, with no limitations on his powers, otherwise known as a king.
Emergency powers
Using vandalism and violence between police and protesters over the weekend as a pretext to usurp a blue state’s power and expand his own, Trump has now commandeered the California National Guard and sent more than 700 U.S. Marines into LA, all over the strenuous objection of both Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass. Watching several self-driving Waymo cars burning in LA, I was reminded of the fire that burned down the Reichstag, and which allowed Adolf Hitler to cement his dictatorship in Germany by claiming his own emergency powers.
Indeed, Trump appears to be both causing and then exploiting the “emergency” in LA to widen his own authority, in a classic move straight out of every dictator’s playbook. As the New York Times noted today, Trump has already invoked numerous nonexistent emergencies to impose tariffs, deport migrants without due process, and now to send troops into an American city.
It’s the first time an American president has unilaterally federalized a state’s national guard over a governor’s objection since Lyndon B. Johnson did so in 1965 to protect civil rights protesters marching in Selma, Alabama. The move demonstrates a president who is completely comfortable flouting America’s constitutional norms and the rule of law, and shows that our rampaging commander-in-chief is increasingly willing to use lethal force against the American people when he believes it suits him politically and personally.
More to the point, Trump has made things far more dangerous with his incendiary rhetoric and unnecessary power flex, in what seems to be a deliberate effort to manufacture a crisis by pitting Americans against Americans. His moves have fanned the flames on the ground in LA, as Trump pours gasoline on the First Amendment rights of American citizens opposed to his draconian immigration policies, flagrant corruption, and unabashed authoritarianism.
During the George Floyd protests during his first term, Trump wanted to deploy American military assets to shoot protesters but was ultimately talked out of it by his most senior military advisers, men like Mark Milley and Mark Esper. Now, those guardrails are gone, and he’s getting the showdown he craves. At this point, there is nothing standing between Trump and the American people, no one in either his administration or the Republican Party to resist Trump’s violent fantasies, and no one to resist this aging and irrational dictator’s most destructive impulses.
Instead, the cabinet is stuffed with unqualified sycophants and sniveling toadies, men like the embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an inept Fox News host and political extremist hellbent on demonstrating absolute and unswerving loyalty to his commander-in-chief, as opposed to the rule of law or the country itself. All of which makes for an extremely dangerous situation for the survival of our democratic republic, which is now teetering on the brink of full-blown dictatorship.
Hypocrite-in-chief
In a supreme irony, Trump has referred to the protesters in LA as “insurrectionists,” even after he pardoned those who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol in his name on January 6 in an attempt to overthrow the government, and undo a lawful election. It’s the kind of Orwellian language you might expect to hear from Vladimir Putin, an inversion of the truth so glaring and egregious that it boggles the mind.
Of course, autocrats throughout history have learned an important lesson about the kind of falsehoods a pliant population might be willing to swallow. If you repeat a lie loud enough and long enough, many people will eventually buy it. As Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels once observed, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
This is certainly true of Trump, a pathological liar who has successfully created a rich tapestry of alternative facts for many conservatives in America. He’s created a universe where he won the 2020 election, where January 6 was a “day of love,” where Mexican gangsters and drag queens are raping and killing Americans with impunity, and where he is the ultimate arbiter of what is right and wrong, true and false, good and evil. It’s a world that is immune to things like facts and evidence and history and law.
Instead, whatever comes out of Trump’s mouth at any given moment becomes reality. Whether we like it or not, we’re all living in this world now, and it is beginning to burn.
On Tuesday, Trump was speaking to an audience of young soldiers at Fort Bragg, describing protests in Los Angeles as an “invasion” and a “rebellion” by wicked immigrants from around the world intent on subverting federal authority and destroying our country. At the same time, this serial draft-dodger was singing the praises of the army, even as we know he once privately referred to those who fought and died in America’s wars as “suckers” and “losers.”
It’s clear that Trump’s attempting to cultivate a bond of personal loyalty between himself and what he considers to be his legions. In his effort to render the U.S. Army into his personal Praetorian Guard, he’s putting on a lavish military parade in Washington to celebrate his 79th birthday, merging it with the Army’s 250th anniversary, and creating a grotesque spectacle at an exorbitant cost to taxpayers designed to showcase his ownership of America’s armed forces. From the Oval Office today, he warned that protesters who dared to exercise their First Amendment rights during his military extravaganza would be met with “very heavy force.”
Meanwhile, downtown LA is filled with cops, soldiers, and federal agents. There are peaceful protesters, journalists, and a few imbecile agitators and provocateurs, apparently intent on helping Trump crush our democracy by burning cars and looting businesses. As darkness descends on this fifth day of protests in LA, it remains tense but mostly peaceful, despite some scattered violence and disorder last night. In spite of Trump’s best efforts, the city has yet to really explode in force, although that certainly remains a very real possibility in LA and elsewhere.
Ultimately, though, whatever happens in LA, it’s clear that we’ve crossed the Rubicon. With the president manufacturing a national security crisis in our second largest city, pitting heavily armed soldiers against the American people, we stand at the precipice of disaster and dictatorship. If the worst should happen, and Americans are slaughtered on LA’s streets, Trump can be expected to exploit that to amass even more power for himself, as our democracy enters terminal decline. The entire world is watching as the heart of global democracy perishes in flames.
