President Donald Trump's law enforcement takeover of Washington, D.C., and the subsequent pile-on as Republican governors send hundreds of their own National Guard troops to assist, is becoming an authoritarian farce, former GOP strategist Amanda Carpenter argued on MSNBC's "The Weeknight" Monday evening.
"So, Amanda, it was interesting to me," said anchor Alicia Menendez. "You have the Republican governor from Vermont ... politely declining to send National Guard troops because he said, if you find an emergency, let me know, but this isn't an emergency. So my question to you is DeWine, McMaster, all these governors that are sending National Guard troops, are they now complicit in what Donald Trump is doing?"
"I mean, they certainly are acting as accessories to enforcing his agenda," said Carpenter. "This is what we all know at this table. There is no major emergency in D.C., like there was no major emergency in California."
"What this is about, what is really happening, is that Donald Trump is finding ways to harness the power of the military to advance his agenda right now, under the guise of crime and immigration, and suppress critics," she continued. "That's why we see it aimed at immigration enforcement and protests. But once he gets that power, there's no limit on it. That's what we've seen. No one has been able to stop it."
"I came into the city this afternoon and it kind of looks silly right now," Carpenter said. "You see Humvees on the streets outside the White House. You see these ICE vehicles. You see tourists taking pictures with the National Guard people. And you want to think, okay, maybe this is just for show. Maybe after 30 days it will be over. He's already talking about extending the fake emergency when there's nothing to do here. There's no justification for these hundreds and hundreds of more troops."
"So I really think people need to wake up," she added. "This is about Trump using the military as his personal tool in a way, so that it reports to him, and they are not like just keeping the oath to the Constitution. He wants to wind them up and deploy them wherever he wants at any time."
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