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This is an adapted excerpt from the June 10 episode of “Deadline: White House.”
As protests continue in Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids, one thing has become very clear: The president is enjoying this. Donald Trump wants nothing more than to change the narrative from the horrors of his raids to what he wants the American people to see as a city under siege.
Right-wing media is already eating up images of burning police cars and masked men holding Mexican flags. Trump wants that to be the focus. He is very comfortable being the president of law and order. Trump is spoiling for a fight — and he will use any disorder or violence as a pretext to call in the troops, to declare an emergency and to seize more power.
This is an extremely dangerous moment for our constitutional guardrails.
This isn’t new behavior from Trump. During his first term, he reportedly wanted to use the military to crush protesters. But this time around, there’s no Gen. Mark Milley or Mark Esper in the room telling him he cannot abuse the military against civilians.
This time around, he has consciously created a government of yes-men and yes-women who will applaud and enable his cruelty, brutality and this campaign of fear that he’s launching.
We need to brace ourselves, because in the coming days the situation could get much worse. This is an extremely dangerous moment for our constitutional guardrails.
For years, some of us have been warning about exactly this moment. We were accused of “Trump derangement syndrome,” and yet here we are. But the problem is, Trump’s base likes what he’s doing in Los Angeles. According to a new poll, 68% of Republicans support Trump sending in Marines to crush the protests and 75% approve of the National Guard deployment.
Now, of course, the irony, it just burns when you consider the role that Trump played on Jan. 6, 2021, and his failure to bring in the troops then — his failure to protect the thin blue line and his pardons of the people who attacked and beat police officers on that day.
But there is something of a long tradition in this country: When there is disorder, people tend to side with the forces of law and order. Right now, Trump is counting on that.