Trump vs. California is the fight Donald wants

Of course he wants to start a fight with California…

Was it only a matter of time before Trump used force against his own people?

During last year’s election campaign, he promised to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”. Even the Washington Post characterised this description of Trump’s “political enemies” as “echoing Hitler, Mussolini”.

In addition, Trump has long peddled baseless conspiracies about “sanctuary cities”, such as Los Angeles. He has characterised them as lawless havens for his political enemies and places that have been “invaded” by immigrants. As anyone who has ever visited these places knows, that is not true.

It is no surprise that in the same places Trump characterises as “disgracing our country”, there has been staunch opposition to his agenda and ideology.

That opposition has coalesced in recent weeks around the activities of ICE agents, in particular. These agents, wearing masks to conceal their identities, have been arbitrarily detaining people, including US citizens and children, and disappearing people off the streets. They have also arrested caregivers, leaving children alone.

As Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic during the first iteration of Trump in America, “the cruelty is the point”.

The Trump administration’s mass deportation program is deliberately cruel and provocative. It was always only a matter of time before protests broke out.

In a democracy, nonviolent protest by hundreds or perhaps a few thousand people in a city of ten million is not a crisis. But it has always suited Trump and the movement that supports him to manufacture crises.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a key architect of the mass deportations program and a man described by a former adviser as “Waffen SS”, called the protests “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States”. Trump himself also described protesters as “violent, insurrectionist mobs”.

Nowhere does the presidential memo deploying the National Guard name the specific location of the protests. This, and the extreme language coming out of the administration, suggests it is laying the groundwork for further escalation.

The administration could be leaving space to deploy the National Guard in other places and invoke the Insurrection Act.

Incidents involving the deployment of the National Guard are rare, though politically cataclysmic. It is rarer still for the National Guard to be deployed against the wishes of a democratically elected leader of a state, as Trump has done in California.

…Trump needs a distraction from Elon, he has escalated protests in California and provoked a reaction so that he can militarise this situation.

Can you imagine if Biden had sent the military against the civilian population?

Trump is itching to call for martial law.

I told you he was a fascist.

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