If there ever was a sentence designed to chill my heart, it’s this: Donald Trump intends to declare a National Emergency and use the U.S. military to deport illegal immigrants. How to respond? Two possibilities:
The Full-Fledged Freakout Route: To declare a state of emergency—especially, as in this case, when there isn’t quite an emergency on offer, is, as the academic expert on civil wars, Barbara Walter, tells us in the next edition of Night Owls, straight out of the wannabe dictator’s playbook. You want to take control, you declare a state of emergency as the precursor to martial law. First they came for the illegal immigrants, then they came for Joe and Mika (see below)…So, to the barricades! Trump is reprehensible. He must be totally opposed even before he starts. He’s as good as his word. He wants to be a dictator on Day One. (Which he said he would be, with regard to two issues—the border and drill, baby drill: it is fascinating how precise Trump can be when he wants to be.) Already, esteemed colleagues like Steve Schmidt and Bill Kristol are waving the bloody flag, to say nothing of the usual suspects on the left. On CNN, someone named Julie Roginsky, who is said to be a Democratic “strategist”—not a title of honor these days—said this, according to the New York Post:
A prominent Democratic strategist left a CNN panel speechless after wildly suggesting the US military could open fire on Americans who try to prevent President-elect Donald Trump’s deportation of illegal migrants.
Julie Roginsky made the claim on CNN’s “NewsNight” late Monday — just hours after Trump confirmed he would utilize “military assets” to help boot illegal migrants from the US after he returns to the White House early next year.
“I promise you with every fiber of my being, because I’ll probably be one of those people, that if anyone comes for these people and tries to drag them out by force, there will be protests,”
Yeah, and I might join her—if and when it happens. (It hasn’t even been proposed—see below).
The problem is, if you start at the barricades, where do you go from there? If you predict a palace coup, and you don’t get one—just a brutal, inhumane policy toward illegals—what does that do to your credibility? Does it just play into Trump’s hand? See, he could say, they said it was the end of democracy as we know it and it turned out to be the end of predatory Venezuelan gangs on our streets and a relief for schools and hospitals in cities and towns across America.
You want to win a battle to the death against the most dangerous man in American history? You need a strategy. Full speed against is barely a tactic, much less a strategy. It is a reflex. There is another possibility:
Very, Very Skeptical Modulation: This can be dangerous. We may well be on a grease-propelled waterslide of barbarity here. But if you look at the things the vile, terrifying Stephen Miller has said in the past, he is not exactly proposing that Trump sends the Marines into the barrio:
In interviews with The New York Times during the Republican primary campaign, described in an article published in November 2023, Mr. Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, said that military funds would be used to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for immigrants as their cases progressed and they waited to be flown to other countries.
Well, those are pretty bad. Images of the Japanese Detention Camps in World War II come to mind. Images of children in cages. But it’s not troops in the streets, not exactly, not yet (and it should be noted that the National Guard is already being used to arrest illegals). It is merely another version of what Trump tried to do when he was in his wall-building phase: raid the Defense Budget for construction funds. Awful, yes, but let’s say it stays within those lines and three or four detention centers are built in extremely remote locales—will anyone, aside from us, even notice? And if they notice, will they cheer? This is, after all, one of the main reasons Trump won the election: people considered Biden’s border policy lazy and weak and too permissive. If your first stand in opposition is against giving the people what they want, you are not going to have much of a constituency when the Dictator crosses an actual Rubicon.
I am prepared to be wrong about this. It may be: give Trump an inch, he’ll take a country. But all-out resistance, from the jump, is probably not going to stop that, either—especially when the charge is led by half-baked talking heads. And a reasoned opposition—you can use defense funds to build the camps, if you really must, but no troops in the streets—may give you credibility down the road. I’m willing to take that risk, for the moment.
As For the Dems…
I’ve been trying to restrain my anger toward the Democrats who caused this situation. Like the Castro brothers from Texas, Julian and Joaquin, who lobbied for loose and looser from the start. And Joe Biden’s impenetrable staff: their blindness to a flagrant travesty of order at the border remains incomprehensible to me. And if it turns out they knew that Biden was debilitated…
Don’t get me started on the Dems right now—especially the constant fund-begging in my inbox from Harris and Walz after they tap-danced through more than a billion dollars faster than the speed of light. Memo to Kamala and Tim: I’d rather not hear from you for a while.
A friend in the media business points out: The “big” three cable news services have an aggregate of 4-5 million viewers per night. Donald Trump’s podcast with Joe Rogan drew an audience of 40 million…and Kamala Harris couldn’t nudge herself to take that challenge? It didn’t fit into her schedule? Some of her staffers, according to Jennifer Palmieri, thought it would be politically incorrect? Lemme outta here.
I am not going to sacrifice whatever credibility I may still have in knee-jerk obeisance to a party so relentlessly soft and stupid. Which brings me to…
Joe and Mika
I’ve had a complicated relationship with Morning Joe. I’ve always liked the show—it’s smart and informal, and tends to eschew the usual talking point blather—although I’m wary of its occasional fanzine tendency. I appeared on it from time to time until the week of the South Caroline primary in 2016, a week when Joe and Mika did a rather puffy town-meeting with Trump and I said (a) that Trump was appealing to people’s lizard brains and (b) he reminded me of the emperor Caligula, who derived his greatest pleasure from humiliating his opponents. Joe accused me of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, a desperately early diagnosis. I would argue that I suffered from Trump Reality Syndrome…and Joe and Mika soon joined me in that camp, when it. became apparent what a terrible president he was. We’ve buried the hatchet since. Joe reads Sanity Clause; I’ve appeared on the show once more.
Now, Joe and Mika have made a very public apology and humiliation jaunt to Mar A Lago. And they are being roasted for it. I won’t join the bonfire. They say they reserve the right to disagree with Trump on many issues, but want to keep the lines of communication open. That seems eminently sane to me. It has been the practice of Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, whose reporting from Trumpland has been invaluable.
Here is where the bright line should be drawn: you can’t defend the indefensible. The trouble is, that’s not a very bright line, barely a smudge in the dirt at this point. But it must be front-of-mind, every day we’re forced to deal with this dreadful man—and for now, as proposed above, a very, very skeptical skepticism should be the order of the hour.
