Presaging Darker Days

Former U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois reminds us that President Trump "is operating within the existing laws" in federalizing the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department and sending federal soldiers to the capital city. However

... what he's trying to do is to convince people that he's this big, huge guy that's now, you know, invading Washington, D.C, and that's literally the farthest thing from the truth. So be concerned about this because this is all Donald Trump's thing. he did it in L.A., too, where he's starting, trying to make us numb to, you know, deployments of the D.C. National Guard or any National guard, the federalization of the Guard, which would take another couple of minutes to explain. But basically when Trump activates them and not the mayor or not the governor a a state, uh, they actually are Federal troops. They are not National Guard anymore. D.C. Guard is the exception to that and so, yea, I think it's a pretty bad day but also, let's not feed into this Donald Trump is a big, scary guy narrative because of this. 

Donald Trump is actually a little, weak, tiny man who has to do things like this to feel in any way safe and secure. This dude is President of the united States. He was President twice, literally the most powerful man in the world, and he still has this hole in his soul that he's missing where he whines about everything. He's the biggest victim,, such a crybaby. Everything he does is just "oh, it's so terrible, I'm Donald Trump. How do these people do this?" Like, what a not man, just the weakest man ever.

 

As an armchair psychologist, Kinzinger earns a grade of A. Yet, the President's action is a precursor to something less narrow than applied to one major city. More troubled, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch explained in October 2023

In War on the American Republic: How Liberalism Became Despotism, in which he rails against the “cosmopolitan class” of unelected elites he claims is running America, Slack writes that the “New Right now often discusses a Red Caesar, by which it means a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people.”

Amidst "crackdowns on universities, the media and vital scientific research," on August 12, 2025 the evidently prescient Bunch wrote 

just as I was finishing work on this newsletter, the Washington Post reported that the Trump regime is weighing a plan for an Alabama-based “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” comprised of hundreds of National Guard troops that would respond quickly to protests — a constitutionally guaranteed right.

With each new erosion of democracy and freedom, a president whose supporters begged for “a red Caesar” to crush liberals is testing the limits, to see what public opinion, the media reaction, and ultimately the courts and Congress will allow. This unwarranted military occupation of the American capital is the greatest test yet, which is why we need to be clear-eyed about what this is.

Not a distraction. Dictatorship. 

As Kinzinger points out, the Donald Trump would need sixty votes in the USA Senate in order to end self-governance in the D.C. and "I don't see that happening."  

Nonetheless, this President is lawless . So his move on the District is not the primary issue, even though the he is threatening to extend, with congressional approval, the 30-day limit on control of the Metropolitan Police Department.

More concerning is Trump's reference on August 11 to New York City, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago, and Oakland, California , couple with his boast "We're not going to lose our cities over this. This will go further. We're starting very strongly with D.C., and we're going to clean it up real quick."

Thus, it is far more than a distraction; it is a harbinger. Yet, the President can be judged by his own words. "We're gong to clean it up real quick," he promises, and that's a challenge to Democrats.  When Trump fails to fulfill his promise, Democrats will have to pivot from "crime in the District is down from where it has been" to "Trump made a vow, and now he's breaking it." It's difficult but can be done.

That would be similar to the President's policy toward the Epstein file, in which he and his personal Attorney General teased release of the entire record and now are trying to move mountains in order not to disclose it. In turn, that fits Kinzinger's portrait of Trump:: he always chickens out (TACO). He promises everything but doesn't deliver because he isn't the man he pretends to be.

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