Donald Trump is traversing some very dangerous grounds right now, and I am far from the only person on the right who believes this to be true.
The decision to send Texas National Guard troops to Illinois, in my opinion, is not a good one, so I will need you to be patient and hear me out.
While this scenario unfolds both Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are throwing around some serious rhetoric to attack Trump.
Trump wants troops in Illinois, and he appears ready to go to the mattresses over this. Johnson has stated that the president has declared “war” on the city of Chicago, and he has signed an executive order that he believes will block ICE from city-owned buildings.
Since Illinois will not help protect ICE agents, and Pritzker refuses to activate his own National Guard personnel, Trump took up Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on an offer to use his troops.
With yet another judge blocking Trump's move, this time one he appointed to the bench, the president says he is willing to invoke the Insurrection Act to get control of the situation on the ground (this law has not been used since the 1992 Los Angeles riots).
Trump stated, "If I had to enact it, I'd do that. If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I'd do that. I mean, I want to make sure that people aren't killed. We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”
Pritzker continues to maintain that this unrest is a figment of Trump’s imagination. He stated, “Well, remember, the Insurrection Act has the name insurrection in it for a reason. It’s only something that you can effectuate if there is an insurrection, a foreign invasion, a true national emergency. That doesn’t exist here, and it doesn’t exist in Portland. It didn’t exist in Washington, D.C. or in Los Angeles. So, I realize that President Trump, who does no reading and doesn’t understand anything, uses the words Insurrection Act like he understands it.”
He later added, “Yeah, but he’s the one that’s causing that situation. That is to say, it’s ICE and CBP that have been launching grenades with tear gas, that have been pelting people with plastic or rubber bullets. They’re the ones that are creating mayhem on the ground, specifically because they want to claim that there’s some sort of emergency. There isn’t. This is occurring in a two-block area of a suburb of Chicago, Broadview.”
Pritzker continued, “So, yes, they can take their own video of an incident that occurs in that two-block area and make it seem like that’s all of Chicago. That’s not even in the city of Chicago. In fact, our crime rate has been dropping and dropping, half the homicide rate that it was a few years ago, double-digit declines each year now. Donald Trump just — he, honestly, doesn’t read. He doesn’t understand what’s going on in the cities. He just has some notion in his head. There’s some sort of dementia going on, and he just keeps repeating things from years gone by.”
Meanwhile, every week, dozens of people are shot in the Windy City, with the death toll only as low as it is because the people pulling the triggers are bad shots. Mind you, I am not saying that to be funny, but we literally see dozens of people injured every weekend in Chicago from gun violence.
When Trump agreed to use troops from Texas, all I could think of was how we, in Texas, would react to a blue state sending its National Guard into our state. We would go ballistic, right? And that is the problem here, as we are doing something that we would not tolerate ourselves under any conditions.
The optics on this are horrible, as it just feeds the Democrat narrative of Trump authoritarianism. And while I agree that something needs to be done, I think we can achieve the same result with a large federal law enforcement presence rather than a military one. Sen. Thom Thillis (R-NC) agrees, stating, “I worry about someday a Democrat president sending troops or National Guard from New York, California, Oregon, Washington state to North Carolina. I think it’s bad precedent.”
As conservatives, we believe in states' rights, but using another state’s Guard is the ultimate example of taking away such rights. To be clear, I don’t agree with Pritzker and Johnson, but nor do I agree with how Trump is handling this situation.
Over and above that issue, there is the issue of how the media will report the situation, as it will not matter what rationale the GOP offers to justify the use of Texas’ National Guard in Illinois. And yes, optics matter these days, unfortunately, as this will all be used against us in the upcoming election cycles, especially if violence breaks out and there is loss of life. Even if Trump wins here, he loses. We need a better solution.
