I was perhaps a little cavalier in my posts last week challenging the Democratic Party for using fear as a motivator in the 2024 race.
I came across a chilling story recently. This came to light in the federal indictment of Donald Trump for his actions leading up to January 6, 2021.
So here's some context. Trump had just lost the 2020 election. He was desperately trying to come up with a way to stay in power even though the Constitution says he needed to vacate the White House on January 20, 2021.
Part of Trump's plan to stay in power was to yell election fraud, election fraud. It was a tactic he had been using even before he got into politics. It was one of the reasons he said that his show The Apprentice never got an Emmy. He cried election fraud when he lost a few early 2016 primary races. He even said there was election fraud in 2016 when he won against Hillary Clinton. He telegraphed his strategy before losing in 2020 saying "The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged."
So his Attorney General Bill Barr was clearly not a team player. After his loss, Trump's legal team was busy filing civil lawsuits all over the country to "prove" the election had been stolen. On December 1st, 2020 Barr told the Associated Press, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” This statement was a huge blow, significantly undermining Trump's plan to hold onto power.
Two weeks later Bill Barr resigns. Trump obviously wanted him gone. There was really no reason for Barr to quit with barely a month left before the new administration came in. He was replaced by Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen on December 24th.
Three days later, Trump is putting pressure on his new acting Attorney General to declare the 2020 election illegal. According to notes from that meeting, Trump said "Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen." But Rosen wouldn't do it because the Justice Department had found zero evidence of widespread election fraud.
So the clock is ticking. Trump finds a Justice Department lawyer named Jeffrey Clark. Clark, it appears, was more than willing to do whatever Trump wanted. He starts meeting with the president behind the backs of his bosses. On January 3rd Trump offered Clark the opportunity to replace his acting Attorney General (who had been in the job for just 10 days).
Acting Attorney General Rosen finds out he's about to be replaced and demands to hear it straight from Trump. That night, January 3rd, Trump forces Rosen and Clark to make an Apprentice-style pitch about who should stay and who should go.
According to the special counsel's indictment, during that meeting,
“The Deputy White House Counsel reiterated to Co-Conspirator 4 [meaning President Trump] that there had not been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that if the Defendant remained in office nonetheless, there would be ‘riots in every major city in the United States.’”
Here is the chilling part: Clark responded, “Well, [Deputy White House Counsel], that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
You may not realize, but the Insurrection Act of 1807 gives the president the power to deploy the US military and National Guard troops inside US territory to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion.
Trump threatened to invoke it when protests and riots were happening in the summer of 2020, saying "If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them."
According to the Washington Post, there is also talk that Trump might invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office upon reelection. If you combine that with Trump's plans to build massive concentration camps, also known as "detention centers," for immigrants and recent language calling political opponents "vermin," a very disturbing picture begins to take shape.
It's commonplace for Trump's opponents to laugh at him and not take him seriously. I would include myself in that. He acts like a buffoon. But even a buffoon can learn from his mistakes. And I think Trump learned some hard lessons about the importance of yes-men in his first administration. Look at how he just got one of those yes men elected Speaker of the House. One of the main functions of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 is to help Trump install as many friendly faces into the government bureaucracy as possible. Combine that with a president on a mission of vengeance, who has explicitly said he wants to make his political enemies pay... well, it could get very ugly very quickly if Americans give this person power again.
I really hope you will think about that if you're considering giving Trump your support in the primary or the general election. Because if you think you're going to benefit from all of that, you're wrong. Trump is dangerous, unhinged, full of hatred and rage, and he is going to take all of us down with him. Do you really want that? Using the Insurrection Act to crush dissent by use of violence is terrifying, un-American, and wrong. Bringing in the military to violently suppress the public is about as close as you can get to declaring war on Americans who don't agree with you. I wouldn't vote for that. I hope you won't either.
In my next post we’ll examine the question: Is Donald Trump a fascist? I wonder!
Let’s make them pay.