Trump's racist provocations will lead to violence. It's what he wants

The world is watching in disbelief as the president of the United States goes full Aryan. After coaxing Black and brown voters into his tent, Donald Trump loaded a gun, trained it at their heads, and blocked the exits.

Trump’s racism surprises exactly no one, but his unprecedented aggression in arresting a Black member of Congress and sending brown migrants to prison without legal process hints at real strategy from an administration otherwise known for incompetence.

Political writers often quip that Trump’s racial animus is performative: red meat thrown to a carnivorous base, a little candy to keep MAGA extremists standing back and standing by. Plus, daily outrage keeps media focus where Trump wants it: on him.

But Trump is not just feeding and entertaining his base, he’s simultaneously trying to goad Democrats — racial minorities in particular — into violence. He’s deliberately trying to incite race riots in the streets, complete with looting and mayhem, as predicate to martial law.

America for me, Sudan for thee

In late March, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, put on full makeup and a push-up bra to pose as jailer at a human zoo in El Salvador. She stood in front of brown human props caged in forever cells “stuffed to the rafters,” even though the vast majority of them have never been convicted of a crime.

Trump wants to boot 20 million brown and Black immigrants out of the country with no thought of the resulting labor shortage he’s creating for farmers, construction, and health care providers. He asked El Salvadorean dictator Nayib Bukele to build additional gulags for that purpose, and, in the meantime, has begun sending migrants to South Sudan, a country where they have no ties. On Wednesday, another judge found that Trump violated another federal court order by deporting brown migrants, without legal process, to a country so dangerous the State Department warns people not to set foot there.

Against this backdrop of staged cruelty toward migrants and refugees of color, Trump crafted a deliberate race-based contrast, by welcoming a “small subset” of other immigrants: white Afrikaners. Embracing the same racist minority that led South Africa's brutal apartheid regime, to whom Elon Musk has family ties, Trump is institutionalizing racial preference while also endorsing the racist violence of apartheid.

Ambushing South Africa’s president

If welcoming white Afrikaners wasn’t enough to punctuate the memo, Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, showing a social media video distorted to support claims of an ongoing “genocide” against white farmers in Ramaphosa’s country.

After both presidents were seated, Trump dimmed the lights to show dramatic footage of a row of crosses, claiming, “These are the — these are burial sites right here … Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there's approximately a thousand of them. They're all white farmers, the family of white farmers … Those people are all killed.”

Trump’s bogus video was instantly and widely refuted. Those crosses weren’t grave markers of murdered white farmers; they were placed along the road as part of a political protest over the apparent murder of two farmers at their home, not a thousand, back in 2020. Trump also showed an image he said was from South Africa but was actually from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Trump knows that 45% of the country will never hear that refutation, as Fox News praised the meeting and video, amplifying Trump’s false claims of white genocide to gin up racial hatred among white MAGA supporters.

Arresting Black officials

Trump is also flexing unconstitutional muscle to intimidate Black officials. Two weeks ago, ICE agents arrested Newark’s Black Mayor, Ras Baraka, while he and members of Congress were visiting a detention center. When that case was ignominiously dismissed, Trump officials pivoted and arrested Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), also Black, also touring the facility.

Federal law, under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 at Section 532, grants members of Congress the right to inspect ICE detention facilities without prior notice, as a function of congressional oversight. Not only did McIver have the right to conduct oversight at the facility, she has a constitutional obligation to do so.

Democratic leadership released a joint statement calling the arrests “blatant attempts at intimidating” members of Congress. They might have added that the arrests were part of Trump’s strategy of fomenting race-based violence nationwide.

Inciting divisive racial violence as a segue to martial law

Backing up the camera from the micro to see the macro, Trump’s persistent DEI attacks against corporations and universities, his well-choreographed abuse of brown migrants, and his very public attempts to intimidate Black elected officials by arresting them supports a sinister theory: that Trump wants to trigger racial violence to give him cover to declare martial law before the midterms.

Rule by martial law is not a new concept; it exists throughout autocratic regimes and lies at the core of Project 2025, which Trump, despite disavowing, has been implementing with alacrity.

Architects of Project 2025 want a unitary government with power consolidated in a single, strongman executive. Their Mandate for Leadership is a 920-page road map directing Trump’s efforts to amass excessive power by sidelining both the legislative and judicial branches, efforts already well under way. Project 2025 champions a far-right, white, Christian nationalist, pro-corporate, and anti-worker philosophy. Enabled by removing checks and balances on Trump’s power, Christo-fascists want the state to regulate bedroom behavior, outlaw homosexuality and birth control, and impose state-forced births nationwide, including in democrat-run cities and states. They redefine personal autonomy as an asset that belongs to an all-powerful state.

The dictators’ playbook

The ever-prescient Thom Hartmann recently distilled the dictators’ playbook into two steps: Aspirant dictators must first create an ‘enemy within.’ Check. Then, they encourage or exploit“big, splashy attacks on the country” to seize more power. If race riots start, this second box will be checked.

Hartmann observes that, “Trump appears to be preparing for the type of authoritarian crackdown Germany saw after the Reichstag fire that propelled Hitler to power in 1933.” Trump’s chilling EO, “Strengthening and unleashing America’s law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect innocent citizens” makes plain that Trump intends to illegally deploy the military against American citizens.

Trump’s carousel of abuse is a sinister ploy to elicit help from the very minorities he seeks to oppress. He is poking us to explode in violent outrage so that he can declare martial law before the midterms, sic the military on US citizens, and “protect America” from yet another disaster he purposely created.

Americans should heed Martin Luther King Jr. and engage in non-violent, righteous resistance instead. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, show up on June 14 and show the world your disgust at America’s would-be king. You, me, and millions of Americans can stop him, and it starts by showing up.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, Chicago Tribune, Howey Political Report, Indiana Democrats’ Kernel of Truth, Inside Indiana Business, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story,Salon,Smart News, South Florida Gay News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.