Everything Donald Trump Touches He Destroys

I couldn't finish writing about one outrageous attack on our democratic institutions by the Trump administration before another one occurred

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Guess who said this?

"You go into a farm and you look and people, they've been there for 20 or 25 years and worked great and the owner of the farm loves them and you're supposed to throw them out? We can't do that to our farmers and leisure, too, hotels. We'll have to use common sense on that."

Answer at the bottom.

We’re In A Very Dark Place.

The incident above occurred just as I was about to send out this post. As you can see in the video, Senator Alex Padilla is trying to ask a question of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem — and he is then forcibly removed, thrown to the floor, and handcuffed.

What is particularly striking about this video is that Padilla clearly identifies himself as a Senator … and that has zero effect on the agents detaining him. Moreover, as Padilla is pushed out the door, he puts his hands in the air, but is still thrown to the ground and handcuffed. Padilla later said that he wasn’t arrested, so he committed no crime. So why then is he thrown to the floor and handcuffed? I’ve attended numerous press conferences and public events over the years, and I’ve never seen someone who interrupted the proceedings treated in this manner. This is straight-up thuggish behavior.

Of course, rather than apologize or admit fault, the Department of Homeland Security blamed Padilla and claimed he didn’t identify himself (which, as you can see in the video, is clearly untrue).

All this comes on the heels of federal prosecutors indicting Congresswoman LaMonica McIver of New Jersey this week. McIver was charged after visiting an ICE detention center to conduct oversight and getting into a tussle with law enforcement officials during a protest at the facility. A federal judge in Milwaukee was arrested and charged with interfering with immigration officials. This week, President Trump even mused about arresting California Governor Gavin Newsom.

A defining characteristic of authoritarian governments is a willingness to target, arrest, and imprison political rivals. I don’t think the agents who pushed and tackled Sen. Padilla were acting on the orders of Donald Trump or that they took a more aggressive stance because Padilla is a Democratic senator. Still, the unwillingness of the Trump administration to acknowledge that elected officials of a co-equal branch of government should not be treated in such a manner, and the apparent willingness of many Republicans and Trump supporters to defend Padilla’s manhandling, is a new and disturbing low.

Indeed, here’s the White House’s statement about the incident.

Padilla stormed a press conference, without wearing his Senate pin or previously identifying himself to security, yelled, and lunged toward Secretary Noem. Padilla didn't want answers; he wanted attention. Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theater-kid stunt – but it’s telling Democrats are more riled up about Padilla than they are about the violent riots and assaults on law enforcement in Los Angeles.

What happened to Padilla is bad. That White House officials are defending it and blaming Padilla makes this situation so much worse. Rather than ratcheting down tensions and reassuring Americans that the incident with Sen. Padilla will be the exception, not the rule, they’ve done the opposite.

The Corruption of the American Military

Every day, Donald Trump and his administration do terrible things that, piece by piece, chip away at the very foundations of American democracy. But what happened earlier this week at Fort Bragg, NC, when Trump spoke to a contingent of the 82nd Airborne could have some of the most far-reaching and damaging effects.

From an excellent op-ed by Prof. Heidi Urben of Georgetown University:

Mounting a stage at the North Carolina base, the president and secretary of defense delivered partisan speeches before a large audience of uniformed soldiers. Others can judge the propriety of their remarks in such a setting, but it was the troops’ response that made the moment so troubling.

On cue, they roared their approval to partisan language about ridding the military of “woke garbage” and “political correctness.” They booed allusions to the previous president, the governor of California, and the mayor of Los Angeles. They applauded the president’s plan to revert yet more military bases to Confederate-derived names. In these and other ways, they behaved not as professional American service members, but as partisans at any other political rally.

… Here is where the soldiers at Fort Bragg erred in a spectacular way. They provided de facto institutional endorsement to unambiguously partisan talking points, and in doing so, risked cementing in the minds of the American public that the military is a partisan actor, just like all the rest.

That Trump acted inappropriately before a military crowd is not unusual. Indeed, according to a story in Military.com, Trump’s team carefully stage-managed the event for maximum political effect.

Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male.

One unit-level message bluntly said "no fat soldiers."

"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," another note to troops said.

For the White House to encourage political partisanship in members of the active force is so stunningly inappropriate that it honestly boggles the mind. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that it never would have occurred to any of the previous commanders-in-chief to engage in such behavior. This doesn’t just shatter the long-standing norm on military non-partisanship, it flattens it with a Mack truck. Donald Trump and the people who work for him have simply no appreciation for America’s fundamental values and democratic traditions.

However, to Urben’s point above, that so many soldiers went along with Trump’s childish partisanship is what set my hair on fire. Members of the US military are trained to keep their political views to themselves. Active servicemembers are prohibited from making open, political endorsements, and they are not allowed to express negative opinions about elected officials. Surely, Trump does not know these rules or care that they are maintained. Those in the audience at Fort Bragg sure as hell do — and they willingly violated them.

Beyond the breach of long-understood norms, members of Trump’s Fort Bragg audience cheered his attacks on wokeness, “invasion, and third world lawlessness, and restoring the names of Confederate military leaders to U.S. military bases. As Military.com reports, the Trump team ensured that those standing behind Trump were “almost exclusively male.”

Think for a second about the impact that the president’s words — and the cheers of the fellow soldiers — will have on the morale of LGBTQ, Black, female, and immigrant troops.

Will Trump’s words and the actions of those at Fort Bragg lead to greater division in the military and perhaps embolden racists, bigots, and misogynists within the ranks? And what message is sent to non-white, female Americans about the military that is duty-bound to protect them?

I can’t believe I feel the need to post this clip from the dystopian thriller “Civil War,” but I’m not gonna lie, it’s one of the first places my mind went as I wrote this post.

Here’s the full scene if you’re inclined to watch.

What happened at Fort Bragg this week suggests a breakdown in military order that simply cannot happen. Where were the commanding officers? Was it explained to those attending the president’s speech that, regardless of the partisan statements Trump made, they could not cheer along? Are the soldiers who booed the names of Democratic politicians getting reprimanded for their actions?

But this issue is much larger than the fate of those servicemembers at Fort Bragg. This is about the conduct of the US military, maintaining the sacrosanct principle of military non-partisanship, and the responsibility of civilian and military officials to keep the military out of the rancor of partisan politics. Donald Trump has, not surprisingly, failed to uphold these norms, but the impact of his actions will be far worse if the military, from the Joint Chiefs to enlisted soldiers, allows him to corrupt them.

America can survive much of what Trump is doing to the country. But, the partisanization of the US military — the one major institution in American life that falls outside the push and pull of politics* — is the kind of norm-shredding that we will not easily recover from.

*It’s worth noting that Americans once viewed the Supreme Court as an institution above politics … but, of course, those days are long gone, which unsurprisingly has significantly weakened our democracy.

Answer

The speaker I quoted above is President Donald Trump.

It’s almost as if he’s completely unaware that his administration earlier this month ramped up deportation efforts to include the rounding up of all undocumented immigrants, not just those who have committed crimes. As I wrote a few weeks ago, it’s as if Donald Trump is carrying out the policies of Stephen Miller and has little idea what his administration is doing.

Musical Interlude