Trump is using every weapon at his disposal for revenge

The authoritarian tide is rising very quickly in America. Donald Trump and his agents have unleashed a torrent and are now “flooding the zone.” Five months into Trump’s return to power, the American people and their democracy are like someone standing on their toes as the water rises. The water is over their mouth and a few inches below their nose. As exhaustion sets in, they will lose their balance, their heads will fall under the water and then they will gag.

Do not believe those public voices and any others who say that these rising waters have stopped and that “the worst danger is behind us” and that "everything will be okay in the end" because of “the institutions” and “American Exceptionalism.” These hope-peddlers are telling themselves and the American people self-soothing fictions.

One of the most common scenarios for drowning is when an experienced swimmer overestimates their skill and does something foolish, such as swimming in a lake, ocean, or other body of water when there is an alert about riptides or other potential danger. They then find themselves in great trouble. A less skilled swimmer would have heeded the warnings and not risked their life.

But a person can drown in as little as an inch of water if they are lying face down in it.

When a person is drowning, they usually panic and lash out. They may become so disoriented and possessed by terror that they hit the person who is trying to save them. Sometimes the drowning person grabs onto their savior and pulls both of them down into the water and neither can escape.

These are all metaphors for the American people and their failing democracy in the Age of Trump. The American people and their leaders overestimated the strength and vibrancy of their democracy and civil society. In addition, they made poor choices in response to the clear, present and obvious dangers of what would happen if Trump — a man who announced he would be a dictator on “day one” — was put back in the White House. The American people and their leaders also had numerous opportunities to “drown-proof” their democracy at the ballot box, through the rule of law and addressing the deep societal problems that birthed Trumpism, MAGA, authoritarian populism and the larger antidemocracy movement. Again, they chose not to. Many alarm-sounders were ignored, marginalized, mocked, attacked and told they were exaggerating and engaging in hyperbole by the gatekeepers in the news media and political class. The alarm-sounders have been proven to be repeatedly and overwhelmingly correct.

The Republicans in Congress are deciding what version of Trump’s “big beautiful bill” they will inflict on the American people. This bill will further gut the social safety net and give trillions more dollars to the very richest corporations and individuals. Public health experts at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania estimate that the budget cuts and other policy changes in Trump’s “big beautiful bill” will kill at least 50,000 Americans each year. This is a very conservative estimate.

During a trip two weeks ago to Capitol Hill to whip up support for his “big beautiful bill,” Trump told reporters the following:

We're going to make a couple of tweaks….I mean, we don't want to benefit Democrat governors, although I would do that if it made it better, but they don't know what they're doing….We want to help all the states, but we have governors that are from the Democrat [sic] party, let's say New York, Illinois, big ones, and let's say Gavin 'Newscum,' who's done a horrible job in California. We want to benefit Republicans. They are the ones that are going to make America great again….The Democrats are destroying our country.

Few, if any, American presidents have ever behaved this way. Donald Trump, as the country’s first elected autocrat and aspiring dictator, rejects the responsibilities and the very concept of public service. He is instead driven by corrupt power. He is an apparent megalomaniac who views the office of the presidency primarily as a way of punishing his enemies and rewarding himself and his friends, allies, supplicants and sycophants. Per his own words, Trump wants to purge and cleanse “the blood” of the United States of “the vermin,” i.e., those who do not support his authoritarian political project and MAGA personality cult.

Predictably, the American mainstream news media were largely (if not totally) silent on Trump’s threat to use government power and (the public’s money) to punish those Americans who disagree with him and that he therefore deems not to be “real (MAGA) Americans.”

For example, Donald Trump has said that he is not obligated to obey the Constitution. The Trump administration is also signaling that it will suspend the constitutional right of habeas corpus. The Trump administration is also ignoring the courts and has gone so far as to arrest a federal judge.

In a recent series of posts on his Truth Social propaganda platform, Donald Trump shared conspiracy theories and menacing images of retaliation against judges and his other “enemies.” In her newsletter, historian Heather Cox Richardson describes one of these posts:

Tonight, after news broke that the judges had ruled his tariffs illegal and after he had reacted angrily to a reporter’s question about the “TACO trade,” a weakened Trump reached out to his alt-right base as he appeared determined to demonstrate dominance. He posted a meme on his social media account showing an image of himself walking toward the viewer on what appears to be a wet, nighttime city street. Pepe the Frog, a symbol of the far right, stands in the background.

Above Trump, in all capital letters, are the words: “He’s on a mission from God.” Below his feet, also in all caps, the message continues: “& nothing can stop what is coming.” This is a phrase from the right-wing QAnon conspiracy community and refers to the idea that members of the “Deep State” and its collaborators will soon be arrested.

The administration is also harassing and threatening Democratic members of Congress with arrest and imprisonment. At The Atlantic, David Graham writes:

For the second time in less than a month, the Trump administration has used law enforcement to directly target Congress. And for the second time in less than a month, Congress is showing that it doesn’t have the desire or ability to defend itself. Republicans are mostly unwilling to do anything to stand up to Donald Trump, and Democrats are incapable of exerting either formal or informal political power. The Constitution’s checks and balances are premised on each branch wanting to protect its powers. What happens if that’s not the case?

In an incident last week that emerged publicly only late last Friday, police from the Department of Homeland Security handcuffed an aide to Representative Jerry Nadler, one of the most prominent Democrats and Trump critics in the U.S. House. The confrontation occurred at a federal building in Manhattan that contains both an immigration court and Nadler’s office. Officers eventually released the aide without making an arrest.

Last week, Donald Trump escalated his threats to take away federal funding from the state of California. Governor Gavin Newsom responded by suggesting that California could retaliate by cutting off tax payments from the state to the federal government.

It is true that Trump and his agents’ strategy and tactic of “flooding the zone” overwhelms and distracts. However, the mainstream news media, the larger political class and other elites have had at least 10 years of experience with the Age of Trump. There is a large amount of public information available about how to effectively counter propaganda and psychological operations. In all, to be so perpetually overwhelmed and disoriented is a choice at this point in the long Age of Trump.

In his June 4 newsletter, David Corn, who is Mother Jones' Washington DC Bureau Chief, shared the following experience, one that reveals much about why the American mainstream news media has been so weak and ineffective as an institution in responding to Trump’s return to power and his authoritarian campaign:

I’d like to tell you about a conversation I recently had at a Washington cocktail party with a prominent media figure who runs a well-regarded online publication featuring well-crafted reporting and analysis….I won’t mention the name of this media poohbah because this was social chatter, not an interview. We were discussing challenges the media face in this current moment of Donald Trump-generated chaos, right-wing extremism and viciousness, and creeping authoritarianism, and I said something about the difficulties of covering what might be the end — or, at least, the weakening — of American democracy. My interlocuter pooh-poohed my premise, declaring that the American experiment was not at risk: “We are strong and resilient. There’s no need to worry.”

I cited Trump’s close-to-the-brink confrontations with the courts, his rampant corruption, his assault on the free press, his multiple abuses of power, the adoption of police-state tactics to implement his mass deportation crusade, the Elon Musk-led decimation of vital federal agencies and programs, and the GOP-controlled Congress’ intent to blow up the federal budget to shower the 1 percent with tax cuts and eliminate health insurance for millions. Wasn’t all this enough to prompt concern? “We’ll be fine,” this person said. For a moment, I assumed they were joking. Then I realized they weren’t. Time for another drink, I told myself and offered a plausible excuse for moving along.

As I headed toward the bar, I was disturbed. If this highly educated, well-informed media person of, no doubt, a somewhat liberal bent — no Trump supporter — doesn’t see the threat, that’s worrisome.

I fear many in the media have adopted this attitude. Too often, they normalize Trump’s outrageous conduct and the threat he poses to the nation.

Trump’s threat and promise to use his "big beautiful bill" as a weapon to punish the Democratic Party, those Americans who vote for the Democrats or live in “blue” parts of the country, and his other “enemies” is just the most recent escalation in a larger pattern of such behavior. (Of note: Democrat-led blue states contribute more money to the federal government in terms of tax dollars and other resources than Republican-led red parts of the country.)

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Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he will use the military and other federal forces to occupy (i.e. declare martial law) Democrat-led majority black and brown cities to crack down on crime and as part of his mass deportation plans. Last week, the Trump administration produced a list consisting of more than five hundred communities designated as “sanctuary jurisdictions” that will be subjected to legal action if they do not fully cooperate with his mass deportation campaign — elements of which have been ruled illegal by the courts. Last Sunday, after complaints from red states, the list was deleted from the Department of Homeland Security website. The AP reports, “A widely anticipated list of 'sanctuary jurisdictions’ no longer appears on the Department of Homeland Security’s website after receiving widespread criticism for including localities that have actively supported the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies….”

Donald Trump and his agents have also threatened to have Democratic mayors, governors and other officials arrested if they do not obey him and his MAGA policies.

In a rapidly developing series of events, late Saturday evening, Trump announced that he was federalizing the California National Guard and deploying several thousand soldiers to support and protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other law enforcement that are conducting raids as part of the president's mass deportation campaign. Those raids have been met with violence by protesters. Tom Homan, Trump's "Border Czar," threatened to arrest elected officials if they interference with the ICE mass deportation raids. Homan told NBC News on Saturday that "We’re going to keep enforcing law every day in L.A....Every day in L.A., we’re going to enforce immigration law. I don’t care if they like it or not....I’ll say it about anybody. You cross that line, it’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job." The clashes between law enforcement, supplemented by federalized military forces, continued throughout the day and into the evening on Sunday.

In a post on social media, Elizabeth Goiten, who is an expert on the Constitution and military-civil relations at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, warned that Trump's deployment of troops in California is a spiraling constitutional crisis:

In short: don’t let the absence of the words “Insurrection Act” fool you. Trump has authorized the deployment of troops anywhere in the country where protests against ICE activity might occur. That is a huge red flag for democracy in the United States.

In total, these threats by the Trump administration against Democrat-led cities and blue states are not new. Although this has been thrown down the memory hole by the eternal presentism of the American news media (and the America people), during Trump’s first term in office his administration appears to have maliciously taken resources and other life-saving assistance during the COVID pandemic away from Democrat-led cities and other blue parts of the country and redirected it to Republican-controlled areas and red states.

The Trump administration also delayed and denied billions of dollars in aid to Puerto Rico after it was devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017. This negligence and cruelty were motivated by racism and also partisan animus (a plurality of Puerto Ricans identify with the Democratic Party).

In a democracy, the news media in its role as the Fourth Estate has the responsibility of sounding the alarm, telling the truth and holding power to account. With Donald Trump’s return to power and his MAGA campaign to end America’s multiracial democracy, the media has chosen an institution to mostly enable and normalize the country’s collapse into “competitive authoritarianism” — if not something even worse.