Trump's insurrection routine: fuel violence, spawn chaos, shrug off the law

Donald Trump's stages of insurrection have passed from trying to suppress one that didn't exist, to creating one himself, to generating a local incident he falsely depicts as a national emergency. In every case, whether he inflates himself into the strongman putting down an insurrection or acts as the instigator-in-chief, his routine has been to foster violence, spawn chaos and show contempt for the law.
In his first term, Trump reportedly asked the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, 'Can't you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?' Trump was agitated about protesters in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. On 1 June, Trump ordered the US Park police to clear the park. Some charged on horses into the crowd. Trump emerged after the teargas wafted away to walk through the park, ordering Milley to accompany him, and stood in front of St John's Church on the other side to display a Bible upside down.
Milley felt he had been badly used and exercised poor judgment in marching with Trump. 'I should not have been there,' he said. 'My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.' A day later, the secretary of defense, Mark Esper, held a news conference to oppose publicly the use of the military for law enforcement and any invocation of the Insurrection Act. Trump was furious with Milley and Esper. He was determined to have a pliable military, generals and a secretary of defense to do his bidding, whatever it might be.
Then, Trump staged an insurrection in a vain last attempt to prevent the ballots of the electoral college from being counted that would make Joe Biden the elected president. While Trump's mob on 6 January chanted, 'Hang Mike Pence!' the vice-president hunkered down in the basement garage of the besieged Capitol, where he made the call for the national guard that Trump refused to give as he gleefully watched for hours on TV the followers he had organized and incited batter police and threaten the lives of members of the Congress.
On the day of his inauguration to his second term, Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 insurrectionists convicted or charged in the 6 January attack. At least 600 were charged with assaulting or obstructing the police, at least 170 were charged with using a deadly weapon, and about 150 were charged with theft or destruction of government property. Trump granted commutations to 14 members of extremist militia groups convicted of or charged with seditious conspiracy to overthrow the US government.
Now, Trump is toying with invoking the Insurrection Act to put down a supposed rebellion in Los Angeles. But his application of the act would be a belated attempt to cover his unlawful nationalization of the California national guard and deployment of marines to Los Angeles in response to a conflict that his administration has itself provoked.
In late May, Stephen Miller, Trump's fanatical deputy chief of staff in charge of his immigration policy, called a meeting of leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to berate them for failing to pile up the statistics he demanded of deported immigrants. Restraint and the law were to be cast aside in their new wave of raids, which hit a flashpoint in LA.
'Federal agents make warrantless arrests,' reported the Wall Street Journal. 'Masked agents take people into custody without identifying themselves. Plainclothes agents in at least a dozen cities have arrested migrants who showed up to their court hearings. And across the US, people suspected of being in the country illegally are disappearing into the federal detention system without notice to families or lawyers, according to attorneys, witnesses and officials.'
Miller ordered Ice agents to target Home Depot, where construction workers, many of them immigrants, go to purchase materials. On 6 June, masked Ice agents swooped down on a store in LA, arresting more than 40 people. Meanwhile, Ice agents raided a garment factory of a company called Ambience Apparel and placed at least a dozen people in vans.
Soon, there was a demonstration at the downtown federal building where they were detained. Several Waymo robotaxis were burned within a four-block area near the relatively sparsely populated downtown. But the LAPD appeared to have the situation quickly under control, until Trump unilaterally federalized the national guard, whose presence prompted further demonstrations. One contingent of soldiers was sent to guard the federal building miles away in Westwood, an upscale neighborhood by the UCLA campus, where they were nuisances to people going shopping and to restaurants. Trump declared he would send in 700 marines.
On 10 June, the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, filed a complaint on behalf of the state seeking a restraining order in federal court against Trump and the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. 'To put it bluntly,' it stated, 'there is no invasion or rebellion in Los Angeles; there is civil unrest that is no different from episodes that regularly occur in communities throughout the country, and that is capable of being contained by state and local authorities working together.'
'All of this was unlawful,' wrote Bonta of the administration's actions. Trump's use of the guard was in violation of the law that requires an order to be issued through the governor. Trump's deployment of marines was 'likewise unlawful', in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the US armed forces for civilian law enforcement. 'These unlawful deployments have already proven to be a deeply inflammatory and unnecessary provocation, anathema to our laws limiting the use federal forces for law enforcement, rather than a means of restoring calm.'
Ironically, the Posse Comitatus Act was instrumental in the demise of Reconstruction. US troops stationed in the south after the civil war were forbidden from enforcing the law to protect Black civil rights. The Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorist organizations seized control of state governments, disenfranchised Black people and imposed Jim Crow segregation. In 1957, Dwight Eisenhower, then president, circumvented the Posse Comitatus Act by invoking the Insurrection Act; he used federal forces to implement the supreme court's desegregation ruling in Brown v Board of Education to integrate Little Rock Central high school.
As a further irony, Trump had been indicted by the special prosecutor Jack Smith under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 for his actions leading to the January 6 insurrection. Count four read: 'From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 20, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one's vote counted.'
Trump evaded justice through a series of delaying actions by the conservative majority of the supreme court that culminated in its ruling for 'absolute' presidential immunity for 'official acts'. He was allowed to run out the clock and never held to account. If Trump's trial had proceeded on the original charges as scheduled on 6 March 2024, he would have undoubtedly found guilty and eliminated as a presidential candidate.
On 10 June, Trump appeared before soldiers at Fort Liberty in North Carolina in anticipation of the Washington military parade he ordered for 14 June, opportunistically using the 250th anniversary of the US army (really the continental army) to celebrate his 79th birthday, 'a big day,' he said. 'We want to show off a bit.'
Soldiers of the 82nd airborne division were screened for attendance at Trump's rally based on their political support and physical appearance. 'If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,' read a note sent by the command, according to Military.com. 'No fat soldiers,' said one message.
A pop-up store for 365 Campaign of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which sells Trump merchandise, was set up on the base for the Trump visit. Aside from the usual Maga gear, it sells T-shirts reading: 'When I Die Don't Let Me Vote Democrat', 'I'm Voting for the Convicted Felon', and a false credit card that reads, 'White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything'. Send in the marines, but first send them to the Maga merch store.
In violation of longstanding military policy on discipline, the selected troops cheered Trump's sneers and jeers. He announced he had renamed the fort to Fort Bragg, in honor of Braxton Bragg, a confederate general and large slaveowner notable for his defeats and bad temper and disliked by his officers. 'Can you believe they changed that name in the last administration for a little bit?' he said.
He told the troops that they were to fight a war within the US against 'a foreign enemy', 'defending our republic itself', in California, where there was 'a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country'.
Trump spontaneously invented a conspiracy theory on the spot. 'The best money can buy, somebody is financing it,' he claimed, 'and we're going to find out through Pam Bondi and Department of Justice, who it is.'
He complained to the soldiers that the election of 2020 was 'rigged and stolen'. Then, he swiveled to talk about George Washington: 'Has anybody heard of him?' Then, he attacked Biden, 'never the sharpest bulb', or perhaps the brightest knife. Twice, Trump said he would 'liberate' Los Angeles, and promised that after that the Republican Congress would pass his 'big, beautiful bill', his budget stalled in the Senate. 'They call it one big, beautiful bill. So, that's good and that's what it is.' And then he rambled about the JD Vance-Tim Walz vice-presidential debate, and how some 'ladies', 'beautiful, wonderful women', followed him to '138 rallies', and on. Along the way, he praised his new chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Daniel Caine, who Trump insists on calling 'Razin Caine'.
The next day, 11 June, Caine appeared before the Senate appropriations committee, and was questioned by Hawaii's Democratic senator, Brian Schatz, whether the events in LA show the US is 'being invaded by a foreign nation'. 'At this point in time,' replied the general, 'I don't see any foreign, state-sponsored folks invading.'
As Caine was testifying, the Department of Homeland Security posted a cartoon of Uncle Sam hammering up a sign: 'Help Your Country…And Yourself…' Then, in capital letters: 'REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS.' Which was followed by the telephone number for Ice.
Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of The Court of History podcast

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