President Donald Trump and his allies are publicly endorsing the idea of a civil war, and columnist Molly Jong-Fast wonders whether it's time to start taking them seriously.
The president has endorsed violent retribution against left-wing protesters, and a litany of Republican lawmakers, Trump administration officials and longtime associates of the president have called for the imposition of some form of martial law, Jong-Fast wrote for The Daily Beast.
"Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that as the election grows closer, Donald Trump’s allies and sycophants are trying to shop a low-key civil war via the Insurrection Act of 1807, which Trumpworld learned about in early June when Trump gassed protesters so he could do a photo op in front of a church holding a Bible upside-down," she writes. "Trumpworld is now very jazzed to use this 1807 act. Not entirely clear they know much about it except that they think they can do martial law with it."
Trump and his allies seem to understand that chaos and violence might be the only way the president can hold on to power, she wrote, and that's reason enough for them.
"Trumpworld has every reason to be worried," Jong-Fast writes. "They can read the polling on the internet, and it’s not great. Trump’s economy is even less great, and coronavirus has already killed 195,000 Americans. And then there’s the Woodward tapes, which show the president knew the coronavirus was 'the plague' while still holding indoor rallies and tweeting about liberating states from lockdown. There is not much American greatness happening, despite Trump’s promise of it. This is so true that the campaign slogan 'make America great again, again' feels like something right out of 'Veep.'"
Their calls for martial law and violence are occurring with such frequency that Jong-Fast has grown concerned.
"This civil war business, rather like the Trump presidency itself, started out very stupidly, with crazy people saying insane stuff on right-wing outlets," she writes. "But like everything in Trumpworld, these people will go as far as you let them. If Democrats and the one Republican who has a spine (I’m looking at you Mitt Romney) don’t push back on this, Trumpworld will happily litigate this election into another term for the president."