President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to the streets of Los Angeles isn’t a distraction. It’s a warning.
In the decade he has been in the political spotlight, Trump has shown a desire to turn the U.S. into a police state, with him at the top. His signature policy priority is a mass deportation campaign led by armed federal officers. He rejects any opposition to his orders as illegitimate or illegal, routinely calling for political opponents and reporters to be jailed. And he previously wanted to order police and the military to shoot nonviolent protesters.
In doing so, Trump casts himself as leading a domestic war against internal enemies. His backers have been explicit on this, like now-State Department official Michael Anton’s description of Trump’s 2016 campaign as akin to the passengers of Flight 93 storming the cockpit to stop al-Qaeda terrorists on 9/11 or Vice President JD Vance’s call for a de-Ba’athification process like that the U.S. occupying force in Iraq performed after overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
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