Tanks, Rallies, And A Nation On Edge
A remarkable split-screen day in Trump's America
“I always say, we have two enemies … We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries … We have some very bad people; we have some sick people, radical-left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the National Guard—or, if really necessary, by the military.” — Donald Trump, October 13, 2024, in a Fox News interview
[The] greatest threat to Western civilization today is not Russia… it is probably, more than anything else, ourselves and some of the horrible, USA-hating people that represent us. — Trump, March 2023
Trump has found an enemy. And it is us. Today will be a remarkable image of what that means. Adam Nagourney sets the scene:
Tanks will roll down Constitution Avenue in Washington this weekend to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday. Demonstrations are being staged in all 50 states to protest immigration raids and President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles. And war has widened in the Middle East after Israel’s lethal attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and its leaders.
The nation is a cauldron of anxiety and anger as it enters the weekend at a moment recalling some of the darkest periods of its history.
Happy Saturday. Today seems the perfect day to remind people that Americans have been rejecting kings since 1776.
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Nota Bene
The Shame of Trump’s Parade - the Atlantic [GIFT LINK]
Up until a week ago, the blurring of the boundaries between the administration’s ideology and the military had not yet manifested as an attempt to employ the military directly on Trump’s—or the Republican Party’s—behalf. The steps taken until that point had been mostly symbolic. (The one possible exception was the deployment of the military at the southern border in what is essentially a law-enforcement matter.)
But these symbolic expressions of military politicization have paved the way for that endgame—presidential orders that deploy the military for directly partisan ends. In just the past week, the Trump administration responded to protests against the enforcement of his immigration policies with military deployments. The likelihood that the administration will try to use the military against its political opponents is now very high. If that comes to pass, we will then learn just how successful Trump’s efforts to politicize the military have been.
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A cauldron of anxiety and anger — By Adam Nagourney
This country has faced — and survived — spasms of tension and disruption before. Debate and disagreement, as well as military and even domestic conflict, are knitted into its history and DNA, from the Civil War to the antiwar demonstrations of the 1960s (not to mention two World Wars, the assassinations of four presidents and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks).
But two things, many historians suggest, distinguish this moment from other troubled times in our past. The first is the sheer number of conflagrations taking place at once — not only in the United States but also around the world. …
The second thing is Trump himself. At fraught moments like this, it normally falls to the president to step up as the reassuring figure, whether it was George W. Bush heading to downtown Manhattan after the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001, or Bill Clinton going to Oklahoma City after a truck bomb destroyed a nine-story federal building and killed 168 people in 1995.
Not Trump.
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Jake Auchincloss: I’m a Marine. Trump is putting soldiers in an impossible position.
This deployment is not just bad for the police. It’s bad for the Marines, too. They did not sweat and bleed in training to be used as political props. As this president grasps for every political advantage, he is attacking not just the Constitution but also the morale and mission of one of this country’s greatest institutions, the United States Marines.
Tom Nichols and I talked about the parade and Trump’s attempts to radicalize the military on today’s ‘To the Contrary” Podcast.
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I’ll post the full video later today. Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.
ICYMI: The Week That Was
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
“No Kings” dogs
Love the dogs and the sign.
It is a terribly sad day in Minnesota as we find out this morning that a Sate Senator and State Representative and their respective spouses have been shot by a person impersonating a police officer. The perpetrator is still on the loose and he had a manifesto naming multiple other state politicians that he intended to target. There is a lockdown in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota at the moment and they are asking people to be on the lookout for any police officer that is alone.
Sadly the State Representative and their spouse are dead.
The Senator and their spouse are out of surgery but we have no idea their conditions. They were both shot at least five or six times.
Both of these politicians were Democrats so the immediate thought is that the perpetrator is someone radicalized by the right. Although police are playing all that very close to the vest at this point, but that likelihood is very high.
Thank God the police were thinking when they arrived at the State Senator's house because they alerted the police in Brooklyn Park who encountered the perpetrator at the State Representative's house and exchanged gun fire with them but did not capture them.
With that as background, I hope the Orange Buffoon has a shitty parade and birthday. He is the root cause of this shit show and I place these deaths squarely on his strong man rhetoric. He whipped up these right wing assholes and now we see the fruits of that effort.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jeffhallinmn/p/a-very-sad-day-in-minnesota?r=2l0s8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Yes, dogs are smarter than people!