“You have to dominate”
The Times has more on Trump’s rage-fit at the governors:
Speaking on a private conference call, audio of which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Trump began the conversation with an extended, angry diatribe.
“You have to dominate,” he told governors on the call. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time — they’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”
The president continued: “You have to arrest people, and you have to try people, and they have to go jail for long periods of time.”
Mr. Trump, who has not addressed the nation since the unrest began, said he was putting Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “in charge,” but did not immediately specify what that meant or if he would deploy the military to quell the violence in the nation’s cities.
Oh, you know – he’ll just order all the protesters to be shot on sight. That’s what Trump has in mind, at any rate.
Updating to add: at least one governor pushed back. (I expect several of them did, as many as could get a word in.)
And yet he still dominates the demographic proclaiming their love of ‘small federal government’ and ‘states rights’ style of governing.
Well, if you think of state’s rights as meaning “we get to treat black people, gay people, and women as badly as we want”, then he is right there with them…
And I have lived among them long enough to know that they only want the federal government small when it comes to helping poor people or protecting rights…small (non-existent) in the boardroom, but huge in the bedroom. Lots of regulations of morality, none for business.
Oh, and larger than large on violent “law-and-order” enforcement.
Everything he says, and everything he does, just underlines the fact that he and his (mis-)handlers have nothing but contempt for anyone who isn’t a rich white male Trump-supporter; or, at the very least, supports people who are wealthy white male Trump-supporters.
‘States’ Rights’ are for states governed by members of the Republican party. Everyone else isn’t entitled to rights of any kind, because not Trump-supporters. Trump-supporters living in states governed by members of the Democratic party are being told by the highest office in the land to use force to remove their elected government and install Republicans instead.
Putin must be so very, very happy right now.
If you have the drive to win; be an athlete. Or a soldier. Or unbearably competetive scholar. But not head of state. Or get used to the bunker.