Donnie Does D.C.

 

Trump’s latest “law and order” fantasy isn’t about law and it sure as hell isn’t about order. It’s about power. Naked, unaccountable, permanent power. And he’s aiming the first strike straight at Washington, D.C.

The plan is as blunt as it is dangerous: put federal troops in the streets of the capital, under his personal command, no local authority in the way. Use D.C.’s status—no governor, no state sovereignty—as the legal crowbar. Call it “restoring safety.” Wrap it in a flag and sell it to people who think authoritarianism is fine so long as the boots aren’t on their necks.

Then, once the shock wears off, do it again—Chicago. Philadelphia. Atlanta. Los Angeles. Anywhere a political opponent holds office or a crowd holds a sign becomes a “security threat.” Send in troops. Normalize it. Repeat until soldiers patrolling our cities feels routine.

He’s been rehearsing for years. Lafayette Square—troops and riot police gassing peaceful protesters so he could strut to a church and hold up a Bible—wasn’t an accident. It was a live-fire test. There was outrage, but no real consequence. The precedent stands.

The District is the perfect laboratory for an aspiring autocrat. No messy state constitution, no governor to push back, just a Congress that will tie itself in knots and a Supreme Court stacked with loyalists. Once troops are in, there’s no natural brake. And the moment military control of civilian streets is treated as “normal,” it becomes the default answer to dissent anywhere.

This isn’t about crime. Trump doesn’t care about crime unless he thinks it’s committed against him. This is about eliminating obstacles—political, legal, and literal. Federal troops don’t answer to city councils or police chiefs. They answer to him. If he controls the chain of command, he controls what gets shut down, who gets arrested, and which “orders” matter. And because they wear uniforms, he gets to sell it as patriotism.

The cheering section will love it. The shrugging middle will think, “Maybe it’s necessary. Maybe it’s temporary.” That’s the fatal mistake. No strongman in history has handed back power once he’s grabbed it. They keep it. They expand it. They justify it with every crisis they can gin up.

Picture the rollout: Troops in D.C. suppress a protest—doesn’t matter what it’s about. The media covers the crackdown; he calls them traitors and sends “security” to their offices. Legal challenges crawl through the courts while the precedent metastasizes. Next, a spike in crime—real or invented—in a city with a Democratic mayor becomes the excuse for “federal intervention.” Local cops are told to coordinate with the military, meaning obey them. From there it’s a straight line to troops “monitoring” polling stations, “securing” state legislatures, “protecting” his rallies. By then, the Constitution will be something read at ceremonies while the real operating manual is a stack of executive orders signed behind closed doors.

Once this gets baked into the system, it’s not just Trump we have to fear. Any future president—left, right, or lunatic—will have the same weapon. The Founders didn’t give the executive this kind of domestic military power for a reason. They knew what it would be used for. Trump’s betting most Americans have forgotten.

He’s not even subtle. He says “dominate the streets” and people clap. He says “take back our cities” and people nod. He’s counting on fear—of crime, of immigrants, of each other—to grease the skids. Fear makes people trade freedom for the illusion of safety every time. And once you’ve traded it, you don’t get it back without a fight.

D.C. is the first domino. It’s where he can make this legal, visible, and irreversible. If he pulls it off, he’ll have proven that Americans will tolerate soldiers policing their own citizens if you tell them it’s for their own good. That’s the green light to do it anywhere. Everywhere.

This is not a hypothetical. This is a man with a proven taste for using force against civilians, an open desire to silence opposition, and a legal loophole big enough to drive an armored convoy through. He is telling us what he wants. He is telling us how he’ll do it. And if we wait until the plan is “official” to object, we’ll be objecting to soldiers in our streets—not the idea of them.

Stopping it means naming it now, hammering it now, refusing to let anyone sell it as “temporary” or “necessary.” Because the moment it’s accepted in one city, the rest of the map is just a matter of time. The capital is the test. The country is the target. And the man aiming at it has never missed an opportunity to turn fear into power. If we let him fire this shot, we’ll spend the rest of our lives trying to pry the gun out of his hands.

Note: this was written entirely by ChatGPT, using the prompt, “800 words about Trump military takeover of D.C. in the style of Sid Schwab.”