Name: Trump’s Authoritarian Theater Was Just for Show, Until It Wasn’t
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Trump’s Authoritarian Theater Was Just for Show, Until It Wasn’t

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Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.General-election season typically announces itself with a handful of reliable signposts — , dueling party conventions, more frequent campaign rallies in contested states. The presidency of Donald Trump has occasioned a new one: . Their presence in Portland, Oregon (and at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018), is more than a flex of authoritarian muscle. It marks, for Trump, the establishment of an election-year ritual, a political strategy ripe for replication anytime he faces the will of the voters. Especially if he thinks he might lose.With three months to go until Election Day, the president is seeing some of the worst polling numbers of his tenure. Eight in ten Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction, and just 38 percent say the national economy is good, down from 67 percent in January, according to a recent survey conducted by the Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Trump now trails Joe Biden in several national general-election polls by double-digit margins, and he has watched his AP-NORC poll approval rating for his -handling of the pandemic plummet to 32 percent.None of this means he can’t win in November. But it does mean that he has lost control of the era’s defining crisis — the capable management of which could have prevented mass death, soothed an economic convulsion, and wrapped Trump’s incumbent’s advantage in plated armor. Absent these outcomes, he’s instead pursuing his timeworn tactic of trying to scare people into voting for him. Polling indicated transpartisan support for Black Lives Matter protesters, but images of dissident-packed thoroughfares and business districts aflame — in Democratic-run cities, no less — were fertile ground for demagoguery, and Trump couldn’t resist. His first inclination was toward strongman theatrics. On June 1, after a conference call during which he urged state governors to “dominate” protesters (and threatened to send in the military if they could not), his administration used police to clear a pathway from the White House to a nearby church for a . Nonviolent protesters were teargassed and beaten as Trump strolled vaingloriously over to the church, grimaced while holding a Bible, and then hustled back to the safety of his bunker.It’s tempting to view what came next as a self–preservation impulse — the panic throes of a notoriously reactive and erratic president hearing the music. Surveying the landscape in July and noting that his polling numbers were still in free fall — despite his having issued a tepid executive order acknowledging that “some officers have misused their authority” — Trump followed through on his threats and dispatched federal agents to Portland several weeks after the city’s most unruly demonstrations had mellowed out. His intention was ostensibly to defend a federal courthouse that had been vandalized by dissidents. Reports from the suggest that his real goal was terror and bedlam: to create an environment of heightened tension and violence that he could attribute to Democratic misrule and then portray himself as having quelled. Agents in fatigues, bearing no identifying insignia or name badges, snatched a protester off the street and threw him into an unmarked van (by mistake, it turns out; they were actually looking for someone else). Other agents surrounded the courthouse and engaged in brutal nightly showdowns with demonstrators that caused the protests not only to grow but to spread to other cities as well. It seemed lost on Trump that his campaigning as a bulwark against urban chaos was undermined by the urban chaos unfolding on his watch and at his behest. Yet, far from being an inexplicable whim, this tactic was both a repetition and an escalation for Trump. He ran for president while evoking Nixonian calls for “law and order” and casting himself as a foil to the Black Lives Matter movement and its attendant protests. He signaled a specific desire to deploy federal forces to U.S. soil four days after his inauguration speech, in which he described America — then, as now, enjoying some of its lowest national crime rates in decades — as a gory hell-scape. He later tweeted, “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!” It didn’t take long for him to find other outlets for his ambitions.In 2018, he was in circumstances similar&nbsp;to those he faces today, albeit without being on the ballot himself: With the midterm elections looming, the united government he’d enjoyed since he took office was in peril and a prospective “blue wave” of Democratic victories threatened to wrest the House of Representatives from Republican control. At the same time, a migrant caravan was making its way on foot through the Northern Triangle of Central America with designs on seeking asylum in the U.S. Trump and his allies quickly cast the refugees as an invading army whose defeat was dependent upon Americans’ voting the GOP back into power. Every few days brought a new escalation of this rhetoric. Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence suggested the caravan was populated by hundreds of drug traffickers and murderers; the president alluded to “unknown Middle Easterners” marching alongside them, a clear dog whistle meant to connote terrorism. The week before the election, Trump announced he was sending 5,200 active-duty military troops to the border to form a blockade. “I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency,” he tweeted at the time. “They will be stopped!” The White House made no effort to substantiate his claims of rampant bloodlust and latent terrorism among the migrants, and troops at the border were left to languish in boredom while the caravan inched torpidly through Guatemala and Mexico — even after the election passed and Trump lost interest.It was obvious then that the soldiers were props. By deploying troops, the president sought to give the impression that they were necessary, fueling the perception of a violent crisis against which he and his party were the only reliable protection. Less clear at the time was just how replicable this strategy would prove to be in subsequent elections. But Trump’s enforcement actions this summer can only be read as a repeat campaign pageant, beholden more to his personal interests than any defensible measure of national security. Neither deployment was commensurate with the scale of the alleged emergency. The declining unrest in Portland has only intensified since Trump decided to “help.”What comes next depends on Trump’s ambitions and his desperation. He’s already expanding his reach further. In remarks to the White House last month, Trump said he would dispatch federal agents to cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Oakland — “all run by liberal Democrats” — to crack down on recent spikes in crime. So far, he has deployed more to Portland (though the status of a with Governor Kate Brown that might reduce their presence remains unclear), as well as some to Seattle and Kansas City, Missouri, and is reportedly planning “surges” into Chicago and Albuquerque. Local leaders have almost uniformly protested these deployments. Trump has ignored them.The president recently , again casting blue cities as ungovernable but for the White House’s interventions. He found few takers for the idea, but even if he fails to do so, it’s not unreasonable to envision a dire next few months — an election calendar marked by federal agents in fatigues not only roaming the streets and doing Trump’s bidding but patrolling polling sites where he fears high turnout or disrupting voter efforts to reach them. The degree to which he is thwarted, or sets his sights elsewhere, would speak less to the resilience of America’s democratic institutions than to their vulnerability.*This article appears in the August 3, 2020, issue of&nbsp;New York Magazine.Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.Terms &amp; Privacy NoticeTHE FEEDTurned back onThe Lower Manhattan light installation in honor of 9/11 victims will return this year after all. The National September 11 Memorial &amp; Museum&nbsp;&nbsp;Thursday that its annual Tribute in Light—the dual beams of light that commemorates the victims of the September 11th terror attacks—would not be lit on the 19th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, with organizers citing the health risks of the pandemic to crews who help install the lights.On Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state will pay for additional health personnel to help the museum safely mount the tribute lights again. … “This year, its message of hope, endurance, and resilience are more important than ever,” said [museum president and CEO Alice M. Greenwald]. “In the last 24 hours we’ve had conversations with many interested parties and believe we will be able to stage the tribute in a safe and appropriate fashion.”&nbsp;—The president’s brother has diedRobert S. Trump, the younger brother of President Trump, died on Saturday night at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. He was 71. The White House did not provide a cause of death. “He was not just my brother, he was my best friend,” the president said in a statement late Saturday night. “He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again.”Robert Trump, who took blood thinners, had suffered recent brain bleeds that began after a recent fall, according to a close friend of the family. [He] had been in poor health since last month. Over the past few weeks, he had not been able to speak on the phone, according to the family friend.—ProgressHere’s a stat… On March 29th in Manhattan, NY, there were 422 positives on 788 covid tests… On August 14th, there were 63 positives on 10,048 tests.—CDC flags rising COVID-19 infection rate among kidsHealth experts say children make up more than 7% of all coronavirus cases in the US – while comprising about 22% of the country’s population – and the number and rate of child cases have been “steadily increasing” from March to July. &nbsp;from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for pediatricians that also includes what is known about the virus in children.“Recent evidence suggests that children likely have the same or higher viral loads in their nasopharynx compared with adults and that children can spread the virus effectively in households and camp settings,” the guidance states. Transmission of the virus to and among children may have been reduced in spring and early summer due to mitigation measures like stay-at-home orders and school closures, the CDC says.—When a drone gets flipped (by) the birdIn a rare case of nature taking on a manmade machine and winning, a bald eagle attacked and destroyed a government drone that was flying above Lake&nbsp;Michigan&nbsp;on an environmental monitoring mission. The Phantom 4 Pro Advanced quodcopter drone was about 162ft in the sky when it is thought the bird of prey attacked – possibly mistaking the flying machine for a rival bird or tasty snack. The drone had one of its&nbsp;&nbsp;and spiraled from the skies, sinking to the bottom of the lake.“The attack could have been a territorial squabble with the electronic foe, or just a hungry eagle,” the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy in a&nbsp;.—The president is expected to visit his brother in the hospital later todayRobert Trump, the younger brother of President&nbsp;, has been hospitalized in&nbsp;, sources told ABC News, a development confirmed by the White House.The details of his condition remain unknown though he is described by several sources as “very ill.”White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany confirmed the hospitalization to ABC News, adding that the president and his brother “have a very good relationship” and that the president would be providing more details later.—Three and a half years in, Trump is still finding new norms to shatterPresident Trump on Thursday confirmed to the The Post he intends to give his Republican National Convention speech from the White House lawn, defying critics who said&nbsp;.… “I’ll probably be giving my speech at the White House because it is a great place. It’s a place that makes me feel good, it makes the country feel good,” Trump told the Post, saying it would also be easiest for law enforcement and the Secret Service.“We’d do it possibly outside on one of the lawns, we have various lawns, so we could have it outside in terms of the China virus,” he continued, referring to social distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic.“We could have quite a group of people. It’s very big, a very big lawn. We could have a big group of people,” he said when asked if he’d formally accept the Republican nomination for president with a crowd of supporters.—Trump won’t be thrilled with the newest Trump bookMichael Cohen: “From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the president’s rise—I was [a]… participant.”—Sign In to Comment

Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.General-election season typically announces itself with a handful of reliable signposts — , dueling party conventions, more frequent campaign rallies in contested states. The presidency of Donald Trump has occasioned a new one: . Their presence in Portland, Oregon (and at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018), is more than a flex of authoritarian muscle. It marks, for Trump, the establishment of an election-year ritual, a political strategy ripe for replication anytime he faces the will of the voters. Especially if he thinks he might...

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Zak Cheney

Social distancing since 1987. writing at intelligencer. zak.cheney-rice@nymag.com.

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Zak Cheney-Rice

New York is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite, and established itself as a cradle of New Journalism. Over time, it became more national in scope, publishing many noteworthy articles on American culture by writers such as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Nora Ephron, John Heilemann, Frank Rich, and Rebecca Traister.

Trump’s Authoritarian Theater Was Just for Show, Until It Wasn’t

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