Beyond illicit intimidation, the specter of violence against citizens haunts Trump's troop deployments
Opponents of Trump should ready strategies in anticipation of the president's instigation of violence in D.C. and other American cities, all squarely aimed at destroying his legitimacy as president
This piece was previously published at The Hot Screen.
Some of the best coverage of President Trump’s deployment of troops and government agents to Washington, D.C. (along with weapons of war like armored vehicles) addresses the surreal mixture of real threat and spectacle on display. Jamelle Bouie notes that “most of these troops will spend most of their time around the same tourist-friendly areas where most of the National Guard in Washington has already been sent,” even as it sends a message to D.C. residents that “they’re less equal citizens under an elected government than subjects of a capricious ruler. It tells them that their freedom to live their lives free of harassment from masked federal agents is a function of their loyalty to that ruler.” Trump’s ability to ostentatiously deploy troops without anyone being able to stop him is a big part of the point; it shows that he is powerful, and his enemies are weak — that he can dominate them, which he sees as the highest expression of personal power and purpose.
And as with other times when Trump has made grand yet nonsensical displays — 300% percent tariffs that come and go! Peace summit with Vladimir Putin that achieves nothing! Bombing of Iran’s nuclear program that sets is back a whole couple of months! — the seriousness of his acts is undercut somewhat by the sense of bluff and unreality. Among other things, the buffoonery makes it harder to take his threats entirely seriously, even though the underlying threats are real and utterly grave.
With the D.C. occupation, there has not been nearly enough coverage of the fact that Trump is not just trying to bluff and intimidate his way into ever greater and unconstrained power. His prior words and actions demonstrate that while he appreciates the power of a big show, he also craves rawer demonstrations of his dominance. Though he obviously thrills at acts of submission by defeated GOP pols, lickspittle businessmen, and D.C.’s bullied government, he’s clearly fascinated with the ultimate form of dominance: the infliction of physical pain and death on others — in a word, violence. This is a point that too much coverage of the D.C. occupation has simply swept under the rug.
But as Paul Waldman reminds us at his Cross Section blog, rather than Trump withdrawing troops from D.C. after 30 days and declaring victory on “crime,” it is likelier that the president will continue trying to escalate conflict, either in D.C. or other cities, for one basic reason:
What Trump really wants is violence. He wants the news will be filled with pictures of uniformed personnel clashing with residents of a city he hates. Once that video is everywhere, it will touch off more protests, which will then become the justification to deploy more troops to more Democratic cities, which could lead to more violence, which will then be the excuse for an even harsher crackdown, which he will then say is evidence that the nation has descended into chaos and lawlessness, which will then be his justification for claiming even more sweeping powers to deploy against those who oppose him.
In support of this theory, Waldman recalls Trump’s first-term eagerness not just to crack the heads of Black Lives Matter protestors, but to actually shoot them. And this bloodthirsty impulse was echoed on a larger scale on January 6, 2021, when the president dispatched a horde of supporters to do what was needed to help Trump steal the presidential election. The country has seldom, if ever, had a chief executive so openly eager to maim and kill his own citizenry. And with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directive last week to arm troops in D.C., such violence became far more possible, as the order (clearly at the president’s behest) makes it more likely, while sending a worrisome message to the troops regarding the nature of their mission.
The most immediate danger, in terms of violence, is that troops might injure or kill a person allegedly involved in a crime (for example, a theft or a robbery). There’s little doubt that should this happen, Trump and his allies would claim it as a glorious justification of their deployments, the use of force confirming the criminality of the person involved and the necessity of the U.S. military to pacify American cities. I suspect that for many Democrats, a shooting by the military would present a sort of crisis wherein they would fear criticizing the armed forces or appearing overly preoccupied with the rights of criminals. But both responses would be deeply misguided, and exactly what Trump is counting on. The Democrats’ general attitude towards a shooting should be on a continuum with what their stance towards illicit troop deployments in cities generally should be: an abuse of power, a misuse of the military, and an act of authoritarian overreach by treating civic crime as a matter requiring forces designed to wage war.
This stance would apply ten-fold to the scenario Waldman outlines, in which Trump uses demonstrations against domestic troop deployments as an excuse to fire on protestors and drive a spiral of protest and greater repression. Given the likelihood that Trump and his allies are consciously pursuing this outcome, Democrats must have strategies in place to interrupt Trump’s plan, and to frame for the public the outrageousness of any such actions by the government. Trump’s opponents must short-circuit the cycle that Trump wishes to ignite, by laying the groundwork now for Trump’s culpability for any violence, based on his obscene deployment of troops to American cities under false pretenses. A top priority must be to reject Trump’s false premise that he is fighting crime by sending in the troops. These are extreme, unprecedented actions that must be treated as such. The role of the military is to fight wars, not intimidate citizens on the streets of American cities, full stop. This is hardly a controversial position to take; it is simply common sense, and fully in line with long-standing U.S. tradition.
Democrats must also do what they can to make a public case that pre-meditated violence against American citizens by the U.S. military would be an unforgivable and impeachable offense by the president, particularly in light of the fact that he is quite openly trying to provoke excuses for such violence. While their minority position in Congress makes punishment of Trump by that body a remote possibility, the larger point here would be to signal to the public the gravity of Trump’s intentions and crimes against the country — in other words, to start working to sway public opinion before an entirely foreseeable crisis is upon us.
As I’ve written before, Democrats need to match their ambition to the danger the country faces; among other things, this means being open to the possibility, however daunting it may seem at present, to forcing Donald Trump from office before his four-year term is over. And this will likely only be possible by thoroughly de-legitimizing him in the eyes of a significant majority of the public; in the case of Trump concocting serious, even deadly, assaults on the public by the U.S. armed forces, this would more accurately involve making sure the public understands how Trump had himself forfeited his continued legitimacy in office by making war on the American people. Democrats can’t accept Trump’s amorality and willingness to harm Americans as a fait accompli; they need to use these traits as weapons with which to diminish and defeat a would-be dictator.
Democrats should also be cognizant of how Trump is using Americans’ goodwill towards their military as a weapon against the citizenry. Americans’ support for the military has been based on perceptions of it as a bastion of public service and patriotism, and the president is relying on that support to grease the skids to his domestic deployments. Democrats should argue that the military serves the public, not the president, and that Trump is corrupting that relationship by making it, at a minimum, into an openly political instrument of power on behalf of the president.
But at the same time, Democrats can’t let the popularity of the military inhibit their opposition to its public use. They should be unafraid to remind its members of their duty to the Constitution, not to the president, and to the public good, not to partisan ends. The purpose here is to maximize the chances that troops and officers do not follow illegal or unethical orders from on high. Moreover, Democrats should be explicit that engaging in or authorizing violence against citizens will result in appropriate consequences for members of the military, including court martials and the stripping of retirement benefits. As with other approaches, this would also alert the public that Trump is attempting to corrupt the military, and that there is a realistic, known danger to citizens due to the president’s abuse of power. It would give ordinary Americans crucial tools for understanding future events in a more accurate light, rather than through the prism of Trump’s propaganda.
For opponents of Trump, there can be no downplaying or accepting as unavoidable the president’s embrace of violence as a political tool. As with other elements of his authoritarian rule, they must turn the sheer offensiveness of his acts into demonstrations of his unfitness for office, building blocks in a campaign to drive Trump from office and the Republican Party from power.