The Scofflaw Strongman

Yahoo

a day ago

DONALD TRUMP SAYS HIS LATEST VENTURE into dictatorship—deploying the National Guard and Marines against American citizens, over the opposition of state and local officials—is about safeguarding the rule of law. 'If we see danger to our country and to our citizens, we'll be very, very strong in terms of law and order,' Trump told reporters on Sunday, as protests escalated in Los Angeles against his deportations. 'It's about law and order.'
Don't believe it. Trump is using the Guard and the military to enforce his will, not the law. The evidence of his insincerity is what he did four years ago: When rioters were on his side, he didn't call in the Guard. He embraced the criminals, pardoned them, and purged the law enforcement officials who prosecuted them. He's a despot and a scofflaw.
In the Los Angeles uprising, Trump—like every authoritarian before him—claims to be saving his country from chaos. 'Violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents,' he declared on Sunday afternoon. 'These lawless riots only strengthen our resolve.'
A few hours later, he called for 'bringing in the troops . . . RIGHT NOW!!! Don't let these thugs get away with this.' And on Monday afternoon, he ridiculed any suggestion that the protesters were peaceful. 'Just one look at the pictures and videos of the Violence and Destruction,' he wrote, 'tells you all you have to know.'
Insurrectionist mobs. Lawless riots. Videos of violence. We've heard such alarming descriptions before. And on January 6, 2021, we saw how little Trump cared about them.
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AT 1:21 P.M. THAT DAY, AS TRUMP returned to the White House after instructing his supporters to march on the Capitol, he was told twice by a member of his staff, 'They're rioting down at the Capitol.' The exact moment of this encounter was captured in a photograph. Trump replied, 'All right, let's go see.' He went to his dining room and watched on TV as the riot proceeded.
For the next hour, TV networks aired videos of the violence and destruction. Like this week's videos from Los Angeles, they told the president all he needed to know. But Trump did nothing. Toward the end of that hour—somewhere between 2:13 and 2:24 pm, according to the final report of the House January 6th Committee—Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, informed White House Counsel Pat Cipollone that Trump 'doesn't want to do anything' about the ongoing assault.
A few minutes later, Cipollone was heard to tell Meadows, 'They're literally calling for the Vice President to be F'ing hung.' And Meadows was heard to reply, 'You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike [Pence] deserves it. He doesn't think they're doing anything wrong.'
Meanwhile, in a phone call, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy warned Trump that the rioters 'literally just came through my office windows, and my staff are running for cover. I mean, they're running for their lives. You need to call them [the assailants] off.' Trump responded by rebuking McCarthy: 'Well, Kevin, I guess they're just more upset about the election theft than you are.'
These conversations took place as Fox News, which Trump was watching, reported that police had been injured and that rioters inside the Capitol were 'feet from the House chamber.' On the screen, according to the House committee report, Fox 'was showing video of the chaos and attack, with tear gas filling the air in the Capitol Rotunda.'
Throughout the afternoon, Trump's aides, family, and friends implored him to tell the rioters to go home. He refused. Not until 4:17 p.m., nearly three hours after being informed about the riot, did he comply.
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TRUMP NOW CLAIMS that he told the rioters to be peaceful and that he offered ten thousand National Guard troops to protect the Capitol. The first claim is misleading. The second is a lie.
The House report shows that before and during the assault, Trump resisted entreaties to call for peace. On January 6th, a text message to one of his top aides, Hope Hicks, said Trump 'should tweet something about Being NON-violent.' Hicks wrote back: 'I suggested it several times Monday and Tuesday and he refused.'
At one point in his incendiary speech that morning, Trump did ask his followers to march to the Capitol 'peacefully.' But that phrase, according to the House report, was 'scripted for him by his White House speechwriters.' The main theme of the speech was to 'fight like hell.'
Another Trump aide, Sarah Matthews, told the committee that once the riot was underway, Trump resisted pleas to call for peace. He did use the term 'peaceful' in a tweet at 2:38 p.m., but only grudgingly. Trump's press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, told Matthews that Trump 'did not want to include any sort of mention of peace in that tweet.'
Trump's other January 6th story, about the National Guard, is also a sham. His acting defense secretary, his Army secretary, and his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all testified that he never ordered the Guard to deploy that day. He never even spoke to these officials. Instead, during the riot, he used his phone to press members of Congress to do what the mob wanted: overturn the election.
It's true that before the attack, Trump talked about the possibility of needing guardsmen. But it was never about protecting the Capitol. It was, in Meadows's words, to 'protect pro Trump people' from anti-Trump protesters.
In short, everything Trump decries in Los Angeles happened on January 6th, and more. A violent, insurrectionist mob swarmed and attacked police. And instead of bringing in the Guard 'RIGHT NOW,' Trump watched the assault, encouraged the mob, and waited to see whether it would keep him in power.
In fact, when he returned to office this year, Trump pardoned nearly everyone who had pleaded guilty to or had been convicted of assaulting police on January 6th. He said the insurrectionists were right: 'They were protesting a crooked election.' He purged the prosecutors who had handled those cases. And in a speech at the Department of Justice, he boasted that he had 'removed the senior FBI officials' who, in his words, had persecuted the 'J6 hostages.'
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NOW, AS HE DEPLOYS THE MILITARY against protesters in an American city, Trump invokes 'law and order' as a bogus excuse. And he vows to go further.
On Monday, he announced a policy of escalation against protesters. 'If they spit, we will hit,' he wrote on Truth Social. 'This is a statement from the President of the United States. . . . The Insurrectionists have a tendency to spit in the face of the National Guardsmen/women, and others. . . . IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before.'
On Tuesday, speaking to troops at Fort Bragg, Trump said he was seizing control of the National Guard and ending the tradition of consulting governors. 'We will use every asset at our disposal to quell the violence and restore law and order right away,' he declared. 'We're not going to wait . . . for a governor that's never going to call.'
And in remarks in the Oval Office, Trump said his policy of escalating state violence would apply to anyone who protests the military parade on June 14, his birthday. 'If there's any protester [who] wants to come out, they will be met with very big force,' he warned. 'For those people that want to protest. . . . They will be met with very heavy force.'
This is not a man defending the rule of law. This is a man continuing the project he began in his first term and tried to complete on January 6th: replacing the rule of law with himself.
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