“Hello, 911? A Violent Man Is Holding Our Country Hostage"

Trump's sadism and lawless hostility were knowable before he retook office. Can America ever overcome its attraction to violent demagogues?

It’s encouraging to learn that some Republicans are joining Democrats to demand an investigation of sycophant Pete Hegseth and his reported illegal order to “kill everyone” after a live drone feed revealed that two wounded men survived a first military strike off the coast of Trinidad. This demand from leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees—including Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker and Alabama Rep. Mike D. Rogers, both Republicans—suggests that the total obedience to Trump and his lawless regime may finally be weakening.

But as much as we must demand that Hegseth and the others who carried out his alleged criminal order be investigated and held accountable, we should not forget that they have been empowered by the sadistic, carnage-loving Donald Trump who wanted a violence-loving defense secretary who would make excited remarks like this to military leaders: “We’re training warriors, not defenders…We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy.”

Is it any wonder that this cosplaying Fox weekend host would feel empowered to ignore criminal law when he saw a live feed of two wounded survivors clinging to their boat’s charred wreckage? “We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement,” Hegseth told hundreds of military officials in September. “We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

Stupid rules of engagement. Maximum lethality. Just the kind of hostility to the law and human life that would appeal to Hegseth’s boss.

It’s this same hostility to the rule of law and lack of respect for human life that explains Trump’s response to the tragic death of Sarah Beckstrom, the 20-year-old member of the National Guard from West Virginia who was unnecessarily placed in harm’s way by Trump and Hegseth in the streets of Washington, D.C. Just days after a federal judge ruled that the use of troops to tackle crime was “unlawful,” Trump responded to the shooting of Beckstrom and 24-year-old guardsmen Andrew Wolfe (who is still fighting for his life) by calling up 500 more troops.

As if the “problem” was not having enough soldiers in the city. As if adding fuel to the fire is ever an appropriate response.

But, of course, these operations are all about adding fuel to the fire and exploiting the escalation of any conflict as a pretext for more draconian measures. No one should be surprised that Trump used the fact that Beckstrom’s killer was from Afghanistan to declare he will “permanently pause migration from all third world countries.” No one should be surprised that Trump blamed Joe Biden for the 2021 resettlement of the shooter—who was recruited by and worked alongside the CIA in Afghanistan—even though this vetted Afghan national was granted asylum earlier this year while Trump was occupying the White House.

But let’s rewind. How broken can a body politic be that a man so violent and broken could be elected not once but twice by tens of millions of Americans? So much was knowable so long ago about the hateful and vengeful character of this man who did not hide his demagogic attraction to violence.

I have written before about America’s culture of violence, most tragically exemplified by the number of gun deaths that plague our nation every year. (It’s already over 13,456 this year, including 380 mass shootings, terrible numbers that are sure to be higher by the time you read this.) Changing this culture requires electing leaders who don’t glory in death or pride themselves by the magnitude of their sadism.

But Donald Trump surely told us who he was in 1989. That was when he took out a full-page ad in The New York Times urging the state to “Bring Back the Death Penalty” to punish the five Black and Latino teenagers who we know now were wrongly convicted for the brutal rape of a jogger in New York City. In some sense, this ad reads like the Rosetta Stone of Trump’s mentality, which remains unchanged nearly four decades later.

Here’s one snapshot:

Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence. Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them.

And this, delivered in all caps, just as Trump’s ranting social media posts are today: “Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!”

Sound familiar? In Trump’s world, the rule of law should never be an obstacle when he believes in punishing someone.

In 2019, after the Central Park Five were exonerated after it was determined they were pressured by the police into “confessing” for crimes they did not commit, Trump refused to apologize. “You have people on both sides of that,” he said at the White House, echoing his response to the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA in 2017. “They admitted their guilt,” he said.

There you have the playbook: Never admit you’re wrong. Never apologize. Never condemn the abuse of the law, if it’s a tactic you can imagine using for you own advantage. (Yet always whine about the abuse of law if your actions are being questioned or prosecuted.)

Permit me to recount several examples (among many) of Trump’s grotesque appeal to violence since 2016 when he made clear—over and over again—what kind of man he is:

• “I’d like to punch him in the face,” he said in response to a protestor at a Las Vegas rally in February 2016.

• “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?” he said in response to another protestor that same month in Iowa. “Seriously, okay? Just knock the hell—I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise.” (Yes, protestors were beaten up. No, Trump never paid their assailants’ legal fees.)

• “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” That’s what Trump asked former Defense Secretary Mark Esper about handling protestors outside the White House in 2020.

Of course, this appeal to violence achieved its apex on Jan. 6, 2021, a deadly day from which the nation has yet to recover.

It remains sickening to realize more than 77 million Americans chose to put a violent man like this back in the White House and another 89 million eligible voters could not be bothered to participate in last year’s election. But it also reveals how broken our body politic is that the entire Republican Congress then chose to bow down to Trump as he pushed to build a gargantuan and abusive police state.

That same cowardly body—ostensibly responsible for representing all Americans—remained silent as Trump demonized migrants and other people of color and sent masked men into American streets to kidnap people without due process or concern for their basic human rights. This ongoing and lawless round-up by federal agents has also swooped up American citizens.

Yes, thanks to pressure from courageous Americans and the recent electoral blowout by Democrats, there are signs that the nauseating monolith is cracking. That includes the near-unanimous vote to release all the Epstein files less than two weeks ago, as well as the current demand to obtain facts around Hegseth’s reported illegal order.

But it will take continuing defiance of this violent regime—and not just a year from now in the midterms—to limit their sociopathic leader’s hostility to the law, escalating retribution toward perceived enemies, and attraction to murderous dictators and other rich and powerful people.

We should never forget Trump’s casual dismissal of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and his great pleasure in hosting him in our (now tarnished) Oval Office. I can’t wait for the removal of the gilded crap in that space and a complete fumigation once Trump’s been evicted.

That will be a day to celebrate, even while we acknowledge how much work lies ahead—not only to begin to repair the destruction and hold the criminals accountable, but also to reimagine how we can build a progressive future. Every day between now and then we should gather the evidence for the necessary transformation of a nation that let this happen.

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