July 23rd 2020

By Bill Berkowitz and Gale Bataille

The occupation of the streets of Portland, Oregon, by federal security forces -- kidnapping protesters, teargasing a courageous group of demonstrating moms, and the beating of a veteran -- are becoming scenes of the new normal in Donald Trump’s America. Trump’s war against America’s cities is the signature strategy of a narcissistic authoritarian.   

Since the advent of the Trump presidency, there has been a constant flow of lies, distortions, and misinformation. Now, however, in what could be the waning days of his presidency, Trump is unleashing the terrorist power of the federal government. 

In these times of the snap, crackle and pop 24/7, never-ending news cycle, stories dissolve into each other and melt away all too quickly. Over the past few weeks the tsunami created by revelations in the best selling anti-Trump books by former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and by Trump’s niece Mary Trump, broke new ground about the President’s malfunctioning regime. While each book has sold close to or more than a million copies, these revelations are already fading into the background. The coronavirus pandemic, which has taken the lives of more than 142,000 Americans, is competing for attention with the president’s desperate unleashing of federal agents to terrorize protestors in a major American city, and threats of similar actions in other cities. 

The President’s unleashing of federal agents to terrorize civilians under the guise of “law and order,” bears more than a passing resemblance to the actions of the infamous General George Broulard in the film "Paths of Glory," Stanley Kubrick's classic 1957 anti-war film about World War I.  Broulard is a General whose arrogance and unwillingness to accept responsibility for battlefield blunders, leads him to search out scapegoats. He pins the blame for the slaughter of hundreds of French troops, during an attack on a well-fortified German bunker, on three poor battle-addled soldiers. 

Trump is hunkering down in his bunker and playing the “law and order” card in a poorly disguised attempt to divert the spotlight from his failure to lead during the coronavirus pandemic or provide critical economic support to millions of needy Americans. This tired but frightening ploy is one of the oldest strategies in the playbook of authoritarian leaders. In “Paths of Glory,” hundreds of soldiers were sent on a suicide mission; in Donald Trump’s America, hundreds, perhaps thousands of federal agents are being deployed to search out protesters, their fellow Americans.

According to Trump and Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli, the incursion of federal agents in Portland will be extended to Chicago and potentially to other American cities including Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York and Oakland with or without their consent.

On Monday, July 20, Trump expanded his federal net beyond active protests – which have generally waned in size, and threatened to send federal troops to big cities that are controlled by Democrats. The Chicago Tribune’s Gregory Pratt and Jeremy Gorner reported that the “U.S. Department of Homeland Security… is crafting plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to the city this week.” While the DHS in Washington “did not immediately respond to requests for comment, … the Department of Justice indicated an announcement would be forthcoming on an expansion of what has been dubbed Operation Legend, which saw several federal law enforcement agencies assist local police in Kansas City, Missouri, including the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service.”

“I’m going to do something — that, I can tell you,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these — Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.”

Governors and other officials in those cities and states have called Trump’s actions authoritarianism, and vowed to pursue legislation or lawsuits to stop him. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said, “This isn’t just an Oregon crisis. It’s an American crisis. We need to stop Trump before this spreads.” 

As The New York Times’ Peter Baker, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Monica Davey reported, “The president portrayed the nation’s cities as out of control. ‘Look at what’s going on — all run by Democrats, all run by very liberal Democrats. All run, really, by radical left,’ Mr. Trump said. He added: ‘If Biden got in, 

that would be true for the country. The whole country would go to hell. And we’re not going to let it go to hell.’”

Beyond Trump’s bloviating and threats, the Administration has failed to articulate what the unleashing of federal “troops” is supposed to actually accomplish. What is the mission? End (lawful) protests? Derail the Black Lives Matter movement? Oh yes, end the violence and stop the increasing numbers of murders. 

According to Jeff Asher and Ben Horowitz of The New York Times on July 6th, murder rates are actually increasing in 2020: “In large cities across America, murders are up sharply, while other violent crimes have decreased. … Overall crime is down 5.3 percent in 25 large American cities relative to the same period in 2019, with violent crime down 2 percent. But murder in these 25 cities is up 16.1 percent in relation to last year. It’s not just a handful of cities driving this change, either. Property crime is down in 18 of the 25 sampled cities, and violent crime is down in 11 of them, but murder is up in 20 of the cities.”

The Trump campaign’s recent ads maintain that we should be afraid in America, afraid of gangs of thugs running through our streets in a dystopian nightmare. 

This ginned up nightmare scenario has little to do with the causes of increases in the specific crime of murder. Asher and Horowitz spoke to several criminal justice experts who hypothesized that the prolonged pandemic shutdowns and a lack of social services may have led to increased domestic violence, including murder. Fear of police brutality may have led to fewer calls for help.  However, they all caution against superficial analysis of trends. 

Images of Trump’s “Stormtroopers” wielding mace and truncheons may play to his shrinking base but they do nothing to help cities and as The New York Times’ Mike Baker recently stated, “most everyone seems to agree about one thing: The combative deployment of camouflaged federal agents has only made things worse”.