Thom's blog
Trump's Most Outrageous Tweet Yet
As the clash between Donald Trump and the courts deepened this weekend - the president took a dangerous new line of argument. In a tweet slamming James Robart - the Seattle district court judge who blocked his Muslim ban - Trump more or less said that it'd be Robart's fault if a terrorist attack happens while the ban is on hold.
"Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril." he said, adding that "If something happens blame him [Robart] and court system. People pouring in. Bad!"
There is no other way to describe what is going on here: the President of the United States, whether he realizes it or not, is now rooting for a terrorist attack because he thinks a terrorist attack would justify his extremely ill-advised policies and make his "enemies" look bad.
This is as dangerous as it is cynical.
But the bigger, more troubling question isn't whether Trump wants a terrorist attack to happen -- it's what he and his cabal of white nationalists and Islamophobes would do after one occurs (which hopefully it doesn't).
Trump and the people he's surrounded himself with -- people like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Michael Flynn -- make Dick Cheney look like a peacenik.
They think America is locked in a death struggle with "Radical Islamic Extremism" - and they think that winning this death struggle is the only way to way to save "civilization".
There are a few surface level differences - but when it comes down to it - this apocalyptic vision really isn't all that different from the death cult that Hitler and the Nazis sold to the Germans during World War 2.
The Nazis - of course - were only able to realize their dark vision after they set up the burning of the Reichstag and thus gave Hitler the cover he needed to take total control of the German government.
So will history repeat itself with Trump?
The Nazi comparison is extreme, but arguably completely justified considering the nationalist ideas of the people in Trump's inner circle.
But you don't even need to go back as far back as the Nazis to find an example of right wingers using a national disaster as an excuse to put their dangerous ideas into practice.
The neocons in the Bush administration, you might remember, used 9/11 to convince the American public we needed to invade Iraq, something they'd been wanting to do for decades.
So, what does this all mean for Trump?
Will he and his administration turn a terrorist attack or something like it into a modern day version of the Reichstag fire?
And if so, what will they use that attack to justify?
-Thom
(What do you think? Tell us here.)
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