Donald Trump has decided he’s the King of D.C. After deploying the National Guard and Marines to L.A., he’s found a new city to invade. His excuse is that crime is out of control (it’s actually at a 30-year low), but we know that he’s trying to distract from his plummeting poll numbers on the economy and the Epstein scandal.
But the threat to our democracy and our freedoms is very real. It sounds like a bad joke that Trump got sick of seeing homeless people in Washington on the way to his golf game and decided to dispatch troops, but absurdity is a hallmark of autocracies.
As Lincoln Square Executive Producer Sam Osterhout notes on today’s show: "The autocrat is afraid and is paranoid by nature, and is ultimately probably the weakest person in the room. … He fabricates a problem, and then he tries to solve it with violence."
And just like Trump first started by threatening to deport MS-13 gang members and ended up shipping off immigrants here legally on technicalities, we know how this ends. He figures fewer people will care if he strips away the basic rights (and dignity) of homeless people, setting the stage for a bigger power grab.
"It's a slippery slope because once you take away the rights of people that you don't really like, it's a lot easier to take away everybody's rights,” Executive Editor Susan J. Demas says.
So in other words, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth floats the idea of repealing the 19th Amendment, which grants women the right to vote, this isn’t just idle chatter.
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