I used a rather inflammatory image in my last post where I described Trump’s very quick progression from calling out an alleged Big Balls assault to Trump’s promise to “end crime” in Washington, D.C. — and then to get rid of all the homeless people. I speculated a worst case scenario of Trump explicitly imposing martial law, with a more amorphous allusion to federal troops in the streets of the nation’s capital.
What we got, of course, was a kind of soft martial law, with his very Orwellian announcement about the city’s “Liberation Day.”
Trump has now federalized the police and is moving in the D.C. National Guard, which is essentially the same as federal troops. Trump didn’t call it martial law, but that’s basically what it is. That means the image I chose for that other piece was only too much because it featured tanks.
We don’t know yet whether tanks will be part of the invasion.
But when I wrote that piece, a part of me wondered if I was being paranoid. Maybe Trump would make some performative speech but not actually take any meaningful action. I was a little afraid that I might have come across as too over the top. And I don’t want to come across that way, even though I’ve posted a few things that sure do sound at least a little like conspiracy theories.
Now I know that I didn’t go far enough. When you listen to Trump’s press conference yesterday, he included his ominous choice of words:
That is, he makes it clear that Washington, D.C., is just the start. Other cities, all of them majority Democrat (and all of them with large black populations, coincidentally or not), will receive their own attention from Trump’s military police state. While Trump has a veneer of legality with D.C., he has none for if/when he does the same in other cities.
There’s a lot more from his press conference that I could post here. Maybe you’ve seen some of it already. Consider this clip, where Trump says that the police are now “allowed to do whatever they want.”
I’m reminded of Trump, during the campaign, saying we only need “one really violent day” to solve the problem of crime.
So Trump isn’t just promising to impose a military police state, city by city. He’s also in support of police brutality on a local level.
I really don’t know what my point is here. Everything I thought could happen is happening, and even some things I never suspected. Trump is hosting Vladimir Putin, an indicted war criminal, in Alaska, which is manna to Russian nationalists who already consider Alaska to be Russian territory.
But then again, apparently Trump agrees with them (and notice how Hegseth and Bondi don’t react):
Karoline Leavitt knows the truth, and she throws out a real “fuck you” to everyone who knows how offensive it is that Trump is meeting Putin in Alaska, using the verbiage that has been used to describe the meeting by those who oppose it:
I’m going to stop there, for now. I’m exhausted, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. America is almost unrecognizable at this point, and to think that Project 2025 is only about 50% rolled out so far. There’s a lot worse to come.
Actually, two last clips. First, the White House posted this video on X:
Second, here’s a clip in that AI-generated style that’s comical and yet highlights the insanity of Trump’s ramblings. The babies are fake, the audio is for real. Believe it or not.