President Donald Trump's decision to deploy federal troops to the nation's capital might serve a higher purpose than what the president has claimed, according to a new column.
Jamelle Bouie, a columnist for The New York Times, argued in a new op-ed that Trump may get personal satisfaction out of seeing the military being used to enforce civilian law. That may also help explain why Trump appears to need conflict and chaos, according to Bouie's column.
"There was, and is, no external crisis facing the United States," Bouie wrote. "But for reasons of both personality and political ambition, Trump needs a crisis to govern — or rather, to rule. And if the actual conditions of reality will not give him a state of exception, he’ll create one himself."
Part of what is animating Trump's deployment is his reliance on emergency powers granted to the president, Bouie noted. Emergencies are typically when presidents are at their most powerful, and Trump has routinely invoked emergency powers acts to justify deploying federal troops to Los Angeles and D.C.
"Rather than treat emergency powers as a dangerous tool to be wielded with care and caution, this president has used them with reckless abandon as a toy — a means through which he can live his fantasies of strength, domination, and authoritarian control," the column continued.