An alarming incident saw the grand age Republican leader decide to use an excessive number of National Guard members to curb the Augmenting protests that happened last week. The event was triggered when, last Friday, a plethora of demonstrations erupted all over Los Angeles. This was following the news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had started performing surprise raids in several districts of the city with significant Latino communities.
The situation escalated quickly, with an uneasy crowd manifesting their anger on Monday. This was after the controversial announcement by President Donald Trump, an individual known for his dramatic declarations such as promising to kickstart the ‘largest deportation operation’ in the annals of US history as a component of his zealous drive for a ‘total restoration of America’. The President called for another batch of 2,000 National Guard members and an additional 700 Marines to join existing forces in the city, supplementing the initial 2,000 troops that had already been deployed.
This particular act from Trump has been widely read as an excessively authoritarian response and has resulted in legal repercussions. Harris, aged 60, can be observed in a video saying that Trump’s ex- chief-of-staff, John Kelly, who is also a retired four-star general, had informed her that Trump ‘loved generals in the way that Adolf Hitler did’.
According to her, Trump aspires for his military to owe unflinching loyalty to him as a person, following his instructions even when he commands them to ignore the law or turn their backs on their very commitment to the Constitution of the United States. Over the past week, there have been numerous instances where Trump has referred to his fellow citizens as internal threats. He has gone to the extent of stating that he would use American military power to take action against those very citizens.
The fact that Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the notorious dictator responsible for the horrific genocide of 6 million Jews along with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, is a deeply unsettling suggestion. It develops an atmosphere of such inherent danger that it cannot be condoned. Labeling Trump as a ‘fascist’, Harris went on to imply that he had sunk further into irredeemable irrationality and instability.
In her rhetoric, she highlights a chilling prospect that in the event of a second Trump term, moderating influences like John Kelly might be absent. Consequently, the individuals who have so far managed to curb Trump’s worst decisions and restrain his more dubious inclinations might no longer have the influence to do so.
Trump choosing to mobilize thousands of National Guard members to counter the LA protests resulted in a significant public outcry. The Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, expressed a stark warning that the US Marines ‘should not be deployed on home territory, facing their fellow countrymen, in an attempt to satisfy the distorted fantasies of a dictatorial President. According to him, such actions go against our American values’.
Newsom added that the upheaval in several parts of LA, brought on by the ICE raids and subsequent arrests, played right into Trump’s hands. He suggested that the President had ‘stoked the fires and acted unlawfully to commandeer the National Guard’ by implementing a weekend choice that pressed thousands of soldiers into federal service for two months aimed at suppressing what he percevied as ‘a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States’.
Newsom further underscored the sinister aspect of Trump’s stance, mentioning that the President’s directive essentially opened the door for the potential use of both National Guard and active duty military to suppress protests nationwide. With these actions and clear polarizing opinions, the political saga seems to be escalating by the day.