If the GOP or MAGA are having problems, does it even matter in the long run if Trump is planning to implement a police state? By Hal M. Brown

The first two articles on RawStory at 6 this morning (Pacific time) were 'This is an earthquake': Strategist warns town hall furor signals midterm disaster for GOP and 'Back-of-the-napkin stuff': GOP senators feel double-crossed by deal cut by Trump.

Just down their page, half the articles have either GOP or MAGA in the titles, and all of them are about difficulties Republicans, including Trump and Kristi Noem, are having.

Here are the main stories on HuffPost this morning:

The featured story is “How Trump Caved And Went Home With 'Nothing' In Talks With Chuck Schumer.” It is about how “The dramatic collapse in talks over the weekend doesn't bode well for the tougher job lawmakers are facing of funding the government next month.”

Does any of this matter?

What if Trump’s move to make ICE into a small army targeting immigrants is just a trial run to see how much he can get away with?

It is an understandment to observe how often we are subjected to seeing pictures of federal agents and sometimes local law enforcement armed like they are about to raid a drug kingpin’s lair on our streets.

By now many Americans, especially those who haven’t seen this happening in person, have become complacent about this. They are so inured to seeing the images that they don’t feel any empathy for the people being terrorized or pang of horror that America has taken the first step to becoming a police state.

Excerpt:

A police state describes a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive, and the deployment of internal security and police forces play a heightened role in governance. A police state is a characteristic of authoritarian, totalitarian or illiberal regimes (contrary to a liberal democratic regime). Such governments are typically one-party states and dominant-party states, but police-state-level control may emerge in multi-party systemsas well.

Originally, a police state was a state regulated by a civil administration, but since the beginning of the 20th century it has "taken on an emotional and derogatory meaning" by describing an undesirable state of living characterized by the overbearing presence of civil authorities. The inhabitants of a police state may experience restrictions on their mobility, or on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force that operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state. Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, contrasted the Rechtsstaat ("legal" or "constitutional" state) with the anti-aristocratic Polizeistaat ("police state").

If the ICE actions were the first step, we may be seeing the beginning of the second step with the DOJ investigating Barack Obama and Jack Smith. While we haven’t seen Pam Bondi posing with a gun, another player in this dystopian drama, Kristi Noem, has been on numerous occasions:

Noem isn’t as intimidating looking as the ICE agents, but Trump would like nothing better than to see Obama, Smith, and his other enemies arrested by federal agents, who while not in SWAT gear, will be carrying guns too.

I think he dreams, perhaps literally, of seeing Obama in prison. In between other actual dreams that arouse him (I’ll leave what they are about to your imagination), I wouldn't be surprised if he’s had actual dreams about Obama being in the notorious CECOT prison.

Putting the current news about Trump’s difficulties, and about what is going on the the Republican Party and MAGA in perspective, what does it all matter if Trump has implemented a police state before the next election? He could render Congress irrelevant, so who controlled the House, or even the Senate as well, wouldn’t matter.

The same would apply to the courts, up to and including the Supreme Court. When you have armed soldiers doing your dirty work, whether they are part of the actual military or not, traditional civil authority has evaporated and you have a police state.

The only thing that can stop a police state once it is entrenched is for another more powerful force to resist and destroy it.

Below are links to articles updated throughout the day, often with my own comments.

Very much related to this is Thom Hartmann’s Substack today:

Excerpts:

This is now the Trump formula:

— Manufacture a crisis.
— Declare an “emergency.”
— Seize powers the Constitution doesn’t grant.
— Bypass Congress.
— Bully or ignore the courts.
— Use masked, secret police and the military against your own residents.
— Send people to foreign concentration camps.
— Build concentration camps within the United States.
— Prosecute lawyers and judges.
— Assert control over universities.
— Merge corporate and state interests.
— Cow the media into silence about your corruption and crimes.
— Then call it all “law and order.”

This sums up what both Thom and I are trying to say although Thom seems more optimistic that American’s are becoming aware of what is going on:

Increasingly, Americans are realizing that Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Donald Trump are all reading from the same authoritarian script that Hitler first authored, and if we don’t recognize the pattern soon, we may find ourselves locked in Act III with no exit.

Kristi Noem’s DHS made a stunning ‘confession’ with new Bible-quoting ads: column, RawStory

My comment: This quote, inaccurately attributed to Sinclair Lewis ( see Snopes) from his prescient novel "It Can't Happen Here" certainly applies to this article:

In The NY Times (subscription) Thomas Friedman ends his column “The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away” with the following:

That is why, dear reader, though I am a congenital optimist, for the first time I believe that if the behavior that this administration has exhibited in just its first six months continues and is amplified for its full four years, the America you know will be gone. And I don’t know how we will get it back.

Not that too many members of MAGA will see stories like this, if they did how many would really care even if they believe they were true? (Rhetorical question)

Excerpt:

Stacey Williams, a former model who once dated Jeffrey Epstein, says Donald Trump groped her in his Trump Tower office in 1993—while casually chatting with Epstein just feet away.

more…

Williams says that she froze as Trump began groping her, caught off guard by how brazenly he did it while carrying on his conversation with Epstein.

“I was just confused because they were continuing to talk, as if nothing’s happening,” she says. “Everything Donald does is hidden in its brazenness. You just do it right out there and everyone goes ‘Well, that can’t be happening because it’s totally wrong and he’s doing it right in front of everyone, so therefore it can’t be happening.’ I mean that’s what went through my head at that point.”

Well, duh, like the following words really matter if Trump is already absolute ruler by the end of this term.