Tin soldiers and Nixon Trump coming/We’re finally on our own…
The most concerning description I’ve seen of Donald Trump’s authoritarian overreach in sending not only the California National Guard but also the Marines to quell easily containable protests against ICE raids in Los Angeles is this:
For Trump, this is merely a dress rehearsal.
The warning comes from the former George W. Bush speechwriter and now longtime never-Trumper, David Frum. Writing in The Atlantic, he foresees a time when Trump will send in more troops, with even less pretext, to help put Trump’s autocratic project more fully in place.
Frum writes that close Trump observers fear this scenario as we approach the 2026 midterms, in which Democrats are likely poised to take back the House:
“Step 1: Use federal powers in ways to provoke some kind of made-for-TV disturbance — flames, smoke, loud noises, waving of foreign flags.
“Step 2: Invoke the disturbance to declare a state of emergency and deploy federal troops.
“Step 3: Seize control of local operations of government — policing in June 2025; voting in November 2026.”
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SUBSCRIBEIs that too alarmist? Is this a bout of paranoia setting in? I mean, would Trump and his Machiavellian adviser on all things immigration, Steve Bannon, really go that far?
Maybe a better question is: Why would anyone think Trump and his sycophantic advisers aren’t willing to go at least that far? How far had they been willing to go to try to stop the Senate from approving the electors in the Trump-applauded January 6 assault on the Capitol?
As we know, Trump sent in the National Guard to L.A. without a request from California Gov. Gavin Newson. The last time this happened was apparently in 1965 when LBJ sent in the Guard to protect civil rights marchers in Alabama from attacks by violent segregationist police. But even then, no one dreamed of sending in the Marines, as Trump and his defense secretary Pete Hegseth have done.
Of course, something like this has been Trump’s dream for a while. It has been noted that in a 1990 Playboy interview, Trump spoke approvingly of China’s crackdown in Tiananmen Square, saying it showed the “power of strength.” And more recently, when he was president the last time, he sent in the troops to quell George Floyd protests, and more than a little alarmingly, he asked then Defense Secretary Mark Esper and also Gen. Mark MIley, then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if it would be possible to shoot protesters — if only in the legs.
Esper and Milley refused the suggestion. How long, we’re talking seconds here, do you think it would take for Hegseth to say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
I don’t know if Trump foresaw that when ICE began picking up workers — including those without any criminal records — at a Home Depot parking lot in Los Angeles, with Dr. Phil somehow in tow, it would spark such a reaction. Those arrested were lined up for possible day jobs, mostly guilty of nothing more than a failure to have papers.
But when demonstrators, in a city that has the largest Latino population in the U.S., took to the streets to object to the acceleration of Trump’s somewhat stalled plan for mass deportation, Trump saw his chance.
It had to be California. It had to be L.A. The feud between Trump and Newsom — whom Trump, uh, cleverly calls Newscum — is much more dangerous than Trump’s feud with Elon Musk. It may be even more dangerous than Trump’s feud with Harvard. This time, Trump has gone as far as to say that Newsom should be arrested, as Homeland Secretary Tom Homan had suggested and later walked back, although neither mentioned any particular cause. Authoritarians don’t have to.
Those in the Trump administration were already warning of a plan to severely reduce federal funding to California, which, as you might guess, sends many more tax dollars to Washington than it receives. Newsom, without any way of doing so, nevertheless threatened to stop sending tax dollars to Washington. More to the point, Newom said what Trump was doing in L.A. was a large step toward authoritarianism.
Trump’s memo to justify sending in the National Guard cited 10 USC 12406, which is only authorized, legal scholars tell us, during an invasion or a rebellion. Of course, Trump has called the protesters insurrectionists, which, after his pardoning of the January 6 insurrectionists, goes way beyond ironic.
But the thing about Trump’s memo is that it never mentions California. It never mentions Los Angeles. It is completely open-ended. You have to read carefully to understand this. The troops, whether in the National Guard or the Marines, could under this memo be sent wherever Trump/Hegseth say they are needed to protect federal workers and buildings. Of course, no buildings in L.A. have been overtaken. And Trump has said, with absolutely no evidence, that without sending in the troops, Los Angeles would have been “obliterated.”
But to put this in context, remember that Trump had charged that not only had Aurora been taken over by the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, and that the state of Colorado had also been taken over.
That was an oft-repeated lie, of course, just as Trump’s description of the state of play in California — where the protests have died down for the moment at least — is a lie when he wrote on social media that L.A. had been “invaded and occupied” by “violent insurrectionist mobs” and that action was needed to “liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion.”
It’s true that when protests turn violent — as some have in L.A. — it is just what Trump wants. We should hope that demonstrations, which have started to spread to cities outside California, will understand the need to remain peaceful. As mentioned above, the photos and video of violence give Trump all the justification he needs — the pretext he wants — to do whatever he pleases.
Trump hasn’t yet invoked the Insurrection Act, which would give him even wider scope to use the military, but we shouldn’t think that it won’t be coming next.
Over at the Bulwark, Bill Kristol — the extremely conservative Republican turned never-Trumper — wonders why we, the people, aren’t more angry and upset about this. My guess is that it somehow remains hard to believe for too many that Trump would take such steps without reason.
It’s the violence, of course, no matter how isolated it might be. And the Mexican flags waved by protesters. And the Waymo cars being burned. With the right videos, Trump can certainly set his MAGA base afire.
But what people may not understand is that it could happen here. It could happen anywhere. It definitely could happen in Denver, a city we know Trump does not like, in a blue state that Trump does not like, no matter how much Jared Polis might suck up to him.
All Trump has to do is declare another state of emergency, just as he has in sending troops to the southern border, just as he has while invoking his reckless tariffs, just as he has in his open-ended call to take on demonstrators.
On Tuesday, Trump was asked what would happen if protesters, as expected, were to demonstrate against Trump’s unseemly and openly narcissistic parade — with tanks rolling down D.C. streets — that would celebrate the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday and, obviously not incidentally, Trump’s 79th.
He said any protesters would be people “that hate our country … and they will be met with very heavy force.”
Trump has warned us. Heavy force. Huge force.
Sounds to me like the dress rehearsal is already over.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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