The President of the United States today used an avalanche of lies to justify taking over the Washington, D.C. police department and send federal troops into the nation’s capital. Even more ominously, he threatened to do the same in other major U.S. cities.
Crime rates in D.C. are at a 30-year low. But that did not matter—Trump claimed emergency powers despite the absence of an emergency. It is the same tactic he used to send the national guard into Los Angeles earlier this year.
Listening to the president speak about the moves during a Monday press conference, it was clear that beneath these disturbing and illegal actions lay three motivations. First, they are consistent with his view of himself as a strongman, America’s first authoritarian leader since George III. He is a wannabe tyrant using techniques favored exclusively by leaders in other thugocracies.
Next, there is the politics. Trump’s presser targeted two Democratic-led cities and named others—Chicago, New York, Oakland and Baltimore—as next in his crosshairs. Combine this with Trump’s aforementioned impulse to rule by diktat and dark scenarios arise about how a federalized police or military presence might be used to influence election outcomes or target his opponents.
Finally, there was a clear element of racism apparent. His references to criminals and undesirable populations in “slums” (which he also promised to eradicate) were unmistakably about Black and brown communities. At one point he practically spat when speaking about low-income housing. It was ugly and unmistakable.
Indeed, between the militarization of ICE and the deployment of the U.S. national guard (and, also per Trump, potentially the military) it essentially amounts to the president and his administration having declared war on the people of color of America. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and new U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro highlighted plans for tougher laws, an end to lax bail policies and to eliminating protections for young offenders. There were also assertions, without evidence, that many of the offenders who will be targeted in D.C. were “illegal aliens” and that they would be deported.
Trump also reiterated his plans to sweep homeless people from the streets. There were no proposals to deal with the root causes of homelessness but rather again, an emphasis on erasing the problem and the people involved by criminalizing the circumstances in which they find themselves.
Combined with massive GOP cuts to programs that help low-income Americans who are disproportionately people of color, with huge funding increases for ICE, with recent revelations that IRS databases are being used to target undocumented taxpayers and with the appointment of senior officials—like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—who have embraced white supremacist views, it was easy to see Trump surrounded by his law enforcement and military aides as the best funded and most dangerous lynch mob in U.S. history.
By the way, for those of you who thought that Hegseth was just an unqualified, misogynistic, incompetent party boy, today’s presser was, yes, yet another reminder that he may be all those things—but that he is also ideal for the job for which he was really hired. Any self-respecting past Secretary of Defense would not go along with Trump’s efforts to put troops in American streets. Hegseth, however, was hired because he would gleefully go along with Trump’s bulls--t descriptions of non-existent national emergencies and offer up our military to be used however he may wish.
The same holds true for all those who appeared alongside Trump. None would think of placing national interests or the rule of law ahead of willingness to do whatever their often incoherent racist-in-chief demanded. They did not flinch when Trump said Democrats were at fault because they wanted everyone in America to be transgender. They did not bat an eye when he offered up Hungary’s notorious leader Viktor Orban as a source of wisdom. They didn’t even offer to correct Trump when he twice suggested he was going to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin on Friday—even though the meeting will be taking place in America.
Trump’s inner circle of advisors, like Republicans in the U.S. Congress, like many in our judiciary and those atop media organizations and big businesses, have decided that they will not object if he uses overt racism as a tool to enable his efforts to seize and exercise authoritarian rule in the United States. Indeed, many no doubt support both objectives.
The result on Monday was one of the most chilling flexes of brute presidential force in U.S. history. As stark as its message was, its implications were even more disturbing.
We are not only well down the slippery slope into authoritarianism that many warned would happen should Trump be returned to power, we are well on our way to effectively criminalizing being a non-white man in America— and to serially silencing all whose views, backgrounds or lifestyles do not conform to Trump’s view of what an American should be.
