Blame LA on Stephen Miller, xenophobic man of malice

Trump, egged on by a staff unfit for public service, sets the stage for violence in California

Donald Trump gave himself an early birthday present this week, setting up a potentially violent confrontation between the U.S. military and American citizens that we all anticipated he’d stage at some point in his second term.

We’ll know soon if the manchild in chief sees this as just a few snacks leading up to the cake and ice cream at his military parade Saturday or if it’s the start of a moveable feast – with democracy and the rule of law on the menu in place of his usual two Big Macs, two Fillet-o-Fish and a chocolate milkshake.

Just under five months since his return to the Oval Office, as you no doubt know by now, our stable genius has ordered nearly 5,000 National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles to take on a volatile mix of peaceful protestors and rioters challenging his administration’s ever-expanding roundup of undocumented immigrants.

Monday night was generally quieter than previous nights, which were marred by protestors vandalizing buildings in downtown LA and setting fire to vehicles. The break in destruction may have had more to do with the day of the week than the increased military presence, however.

Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and so-called border czar Tom Homan are beating their chests on social media and in front of TV cameras, calling LA a Third World city and threatening to arrest Gov. Gavin Newsom – or “Newscum,” as our charming president calls him – if he doesn’t begin cooperating with the militarization of the second-most populous city in the nation.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, self-appointed Head Christian on the Hill, demurred on the question of arrest but said the governor “ought to be tarred and feathered, I’ll say that.”

Newsom and the mayor and police chief of LA have condemned the arrival of troops, rightfully expressing fear that Trump is doing nothing but increasing the risk of violence. Chief Jim McDonnell, a 30-year veteran of law enforcement, said the addition of soldiers “presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us tasked with safeguarding this city.”

Planning, of course, is not a Trump administration forte.

Deploying troops was an impulsive move, driven in part by the orange man’s long unfulfilled desire to thump the people who keep saying mean things about him and in part by the breathless, melodramatic reporting of Fox News and the gaggle of sleazy little conservative TV networks vying for his attention.

The internet, as The New York Times reported in a discouraging roundup Tuesday, isn’t helping, with wingnuts rapidly circulating fake photos and rehashed conspiracy theories about LA that are sure to make their way into Trump’s Truth Social feed.

One idiot, known for revealing that Taylor Swift’s popularity is the result of a psychological operation funded by the Pentagon to undercut Trump, claims that LA’s mayor is tied to the CIA and helped start the rioting herself. George Soros and Barack Obama also make cameos in this feverish online “reporting.”

It appears, however, that we have Trump’s bloodline-purity troll Stephen Miller to thank for much of this.

Make no mistake: The blame for the destruction so far lies squarely with the fraction of protesters who’ve unwisely chosen violence over peaceful dissent.

But the violence in Los Angeles likely would not have happened if the Trump administration hadn’t (1) deployed fascist tactics – masked ICE agents in military gear, smashing car windows and skipping the niceties of warrants or a show of ID, (2) hadn’t veered so far from the administration’s stated goal of arresting only immigrants with violent criminal records and (3) employed Stephen Miller.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that in late May, Miller went to ICE headquarters to convey the president’s orders to dramatically increase their daily arrest totals – or else.

The Journal reported, “Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the ‘worst of the worst,’ weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to ‘just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,’ Miller told top ICE officials.”

Miller’s message was clear: Forget about developing lists of immigrants who’ve committed violent crimes – or written undesirable op-ed pieces for their college newspapers – and just go arrest people.

Go to Home Depot, 7-Eleven and other places that immigrant day laborers gather to find work. Hell, go to their very workplaces and grab them, toss them into a van and deport them.

The irony of targeting immigrants – those shiftless layabouts who leech off hard-working white Americans – while they’re working is, of course, lost on this administration.

The president, according to Miller, is upset that his ICE had fallen behind the Biden administration’s total for deportations during its final year – a surprising fact given all the body-snatching that ICE has been engaged in, sometimes with Dr. Phil in tow, since January.

It’s probably not the president who is most upset by the low numbers but Miller himself, who seems to have developed a pathological hatred of non-white people, especially Latinos, while in high school and parlayed it into a career.

If it weren’t for Miller and Fox News chirping in his ear, what would be the focus of Trump’s attention besides golf? Would he really care so much about transgender people and immigrants? He’s no doubt a spiteful, malevolent and greedy man, but he’s also lazy, choosing his enemies based almost entirely on what scrolls across his cell phone and TV set and what amoral men like Miller and Steve Bannon tell him is happening in the world.

As protests spread across the country, we’re now at the juncture that Fight the Fire’s Mike Sorrell and others warned us about months before Trump’s inauguration – the day when young military recruits might be called upon to shoot protesters.

Remember, Trump proposed that soldiers shoot protesters in their legs near the White House in Washington D.C. in the days after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Top military officers talked him out of it, but there’s no one, certainly not Hegseth or Miller, to save our country from that now.

Hegseth, in fact, dodged repeated questions during his confirmation hearing about whether he’d follow such orders – yet was still confirmed by the Senate. In House testimony Tuesday, he noted that he was in Lafayette Park as a Guardsman during those protests and said he believes active and reserve National Guard troops will become “a critical component of how we secure that homeland.”

In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Marine Corps Commandant Eric Smith said he had no fear that Marines in LA would shoot at or otherwise harm civilians.

“I am not concerned. I have great faith in my Marines and their junior leaders and their more senior leaders to execute the lawful tasks that they are given,” he said.

That’s good to hear. Too bad none of us can have same great faith in Trump – or, just as importantly, Miller, Hegseth and the others who gleefully seed and nurture his malice.