What passes for “normal” coming from the lips of Donald Trump would have gotten any former president escorted out of office via the 25th Amendment. He is not sound of mind. He gets up and rambles incoherently and today’s presser at the White House was prima facie evidence of that. He said twice that he was going to Russia on Friday and unless he’s given or sold Alaska back to Vladimir Putin, in fact he’s going to Alaska. That was not the only scary thing out of his mouth. Listen to this tirade.
Trump continues to push a revisionist history about the LA fires that has no relationship to reality. He wasn't in office when they started. They were virtually contained by 1/20. The military did not bring in water from a giant spigot. This is potato-brained rambling. https://t.co/Ef1OfgM8ji
— Mike Rothschild (@rothschildmd on blu sky) (@rothschildmd) August 11, 2025
There was no “sending in of the military to bring the water down.” He’s just rambling nonsense at this point, simply because he’s standing at a podium and has to say something. What Trump is doing, in a nutshell, is testing the limits of his presidential authority in Washington, D.C. And he can get away with it to some extent in D.C. The very nature of D.C. makes the city more susceptible to federal control than any other American city. But Trump cannot simply send the National Guard wherever he pleases. And he’s not going to send it to Chicago.
Donald, thanks for the compliment!
Let’s not lie to the public, you and I both know you have no authority to take over Chicago.
By the way, where are the Epstein files? https://t.co/PhikjsUkZ2
— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) August 11, 2025
To use the D.C. police for longer than 30 days, he would need authorization from Congress.
In an order Monday, Trump said the D.C. police force under his control would protect federal buildings and national monuments, typically a function of federal law enforcement agencies.
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb called Trump’s actions “unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful.” Schwalb said there is “no crime emergency” in the district that would justify the takeover of the police force. Violent crime in the district, he said, is at a 30-year low.
A federal law passed in 1878, the Posse Comitatus Act, bars the use of the U.S. military for civilian law enforcement except when authorized by the Constitution or another provision of federal law.
The Trump administration is currently on trial in Los Angeles over its deployment of the California guard in June to quell immigration-related protests in that city. That trial will test whether a federal judge believes Trump’s deployment ran afoul of that 1878 law and must be rescinded.
But the legality of using the guard in D.C. may be different. Presidential use of the D.C. guard has rarely faced legal resistance because it has typically happened in cooperation with D.C. leaders. And the Justice Department has long maintained that the D.C. guard, unlike the other guards, can be used for ordinary law enforcement without violating Posse Comitatus. A 1989 legal opinion from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel found that President George H.W. Bush could use the D.C. guard to carry out law enforcement missions in D.C. as part of the so-called war on drugs.
If Trump’s deployment of the D.C. guard is challenged in court, a judge would almost certainly take note of the OLC opinion, but would not be bound to follow it.
You get the gist of what’s going on here, is that Trump is skating right on the edge of the law and he’s doing a test run in D.C. to see what he gets away with. And make no mistake, he’s doing this for the purpose of getting people acclimated to troops in the streets in preparation for the time when he’s ready to invoke martial law nationwide and take over the country in a violent coup d’etat. That is not hyperbole. That is what Trump is playing with now to see if he can pull it off. Anybody who thinks that less than that is going on is either an idiot or a fool.
And now here’s an announcement about the burnt part of LA that didn’t burn from the king we didn’t elect….
I think you’re spot on, Ursula. If the Dems win control of Congress next year, I’ve no doubt he will say the election was rigged, lock up the Capitol to prevent members from being seated, and declare the results invalid.
Isn’t the National Guard something that happens in the States? If so that raises (not begs – that’s something totally different) the question, which National Guard is he sending? Along with other questions such as, since Governor has to ask for the National Guard to be used, wouldn’t the DC mayor have to do the same? Yes, I know, in an emergency, but there is demonstrably no emergency.