Thuggery.  Among many derogatory terms used by Donald Trump to disparage people is “thug.”  Also lunatic, sick, low-life, crook.  In playground parlance, “it takes one to know one.” Not content with name-calling, Mr. Trump has surrounded himself and his administration with fellow thugs, as cabinet secretaries and agency heads.  In the 24/7 information cycle, the headliner thugs may change from hour to hour, or day to day, but the commonalities among them don’t.  The common thread appears to be allegiance to Trump rather than to the Constitution.  That, and lack of empathy, might create a crisis of conscience for many people in government leadership, but not the Trump Administration. The Secretary of Defense has fired long-serving, experienced military personnel, apparently because they are persons of color, women, or both. The Secretary of Homeland Security dresses up in costume for photo ops at a notorious Salvadoran prison, or a shooting range, or on horseback wearing a cowboy hat, thankfully, in lieu of a MAGA baseball cap.  At the same time, states are pleading, with little success, for FEMA’s help to rebuild communities devastated months ago by rainstorms and wildfires.  The White House Border Czar has ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in his portfolio and appears to have ice in his veins, too.

Rather than tackle real community challenges in partnership with states and localities, the Trump Administration uses coercion and extortion to force compliance to his whims and dictates.  It doesn’t matter which area – public and private universities, law firms, corporations, cities – all are fair game in his desire to rule America as a czar, dominated by white males.  The major cities he attacks – Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston — are headed by mayors of color, some of whom also are women. If Trump really wants to reduce criminal activity in America, he should focus on the plethora of firearms in this country.  The size of the community isn’t relevant. Mass shootings have occurred in urban, suburban, and rural populations. 

Calling out the National Guard in D.C. today is performance, not rooted in reality.  I was working on Capitol Hill in April of 1968 when Lyndon Johnson brought in the National Guard following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  People, including my roommate and me, were terrified.  Looting of businesses led to setting fire to downtown portions of the city, fires that burned for days, creating a smoky haze over the city and suburbs. National Guard troops surrounded the Capitol Building and were deployed in the Congressional office buildings. I remember practically tripping over armed soldiers sitting on the floor in the Senate cafeteria at lunch time. It took decades for some neighborhoods to recover from the riots.  

That’s not the situation in D.C. today.  Washington’s crime rate has been falling since the pandemic.  It’s fantasy to believe that crime can be wholly eradicated, but local police departments have the responsibility for patrol and enforcement, not the National Guard. There is no reason for huge military vehicles, designed and built for the battlefield, to patrol the monumental core of the Nation’s Capital.  It is intimidation, pure and simple, and National Guard troops, sadly, are pawns in Trump’s thuggery. Members of the National Guard are citizen-soldiers, called out in emergencies by the governor of their state (except in D.C. where the President controls the Guard).  Normally, they would be working at their civilian desks, operating local businesses, teaching school, building homes, and raising families.  Putting thousands of National Guard troops in D.C. leaves a hole in their local economies.  Estimates are in the tens of millions of dollars, but the total costs of deployment and loss of local income may never be known.  What we do know is that, every day, Trump’s thuggery puts our treasured democracy in ever greater danger.