The Insurrectionist is Threatening to Use the Insurrection Act

Trump wants his own Tiananmen Square moment.

Donald Trump is having a normal one. Amid widespread protests against the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, this week he took to Truth Social and said:

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.”

The Insurrection Act is almost as old as America, and enables the president to dispatch troops to put down acts of rebellion. When they drafted the earliest versions of the law, our forefathers likely didn’t envision bequeathing such a power to a reckless, irresponsible madman like Donald Trump. They famously believed that, in James Madison’s words, the presidency should be reserved for those “who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society.” We’re a long way from that.

All of this begs the question: Is it appropriate for Trump to menace the citizens of Minnesota in this way, by threatening to sic US troops on them? Of course not. Here is what Joseph Nunn, a scholar at the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told CBS News:

“None of the criteria that would justify an invocation of the Insurrection Act are present in Minnesota. What exactly is the insurrection? There is no insurrection. Are the insurrectionists the people of Minneapolis? Who exactly is being protected?

And to the extent that there is violence, it is primarily being perpetrated by ICE and CBP. And the government can’t go to an American city and foment unrest through lawless, violent conduct and then turn around and invoke the Insurrection Act, claiming that they need to do this to suppress that unrest.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has openly lusted for violence against peaceful protestors in the streets. He asked the military to shoot protesters in the legs during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020. He openly admired the Chinese communist government’s brutal crackdown in Tiananmen Square, saying in 1990 that it “shows you the power of strength.” He told his supporters to “knock the crap out of them” when protestors appear at his rallies, promising “I will pay your legal bills.”

The Insurrection Act’s actual language makes it abundantly clear that the statute wasn’t meant to be invoked against people like Renee Good—a peaceful, unarmed legal observer who posed no physical threat to the ICE officer who killed her. Instead, it was intended as a final resort against the kinds of armed uprising that posed an acute danger to the survival of the republic. The law states:

“Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”

The relatively few times it has been invoked throughout our history makes clear the kinds of instances it should be reserved for: the secession of the Southern states that sparked the Civil War; attempted Klan coups and armed insurgencies across the post-bellum South; the state’s refusal to integrate public schools in Little Rock, AR. Ask yourself: Do the largely peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other US cities bear any resemblance to these historical events?

There was, of course, one recent historical event that absolutely called for the Insurrection Act: the actual insurrection that Trump raised on January 6, 2021. That was the most documented crime in our nation’s history, and the facts of it are crystal clear for anyone who isn’t fully brain-poisoned by MAGA’s alternative history. Trump summoned the crowd of tens of thousand to the nation’s capital, promising it “will be wild.” He whipped them into a frenzy by exhorting them to “show strength” because “you’ll never take back our country with weakness.”

He then told them to march to the Capitol, where thousands of them proceeded to lay siege to the building and violently assault heroic police officers like my friends Michael Fanone, Harry Dunn, Danny Hodges, Aquilino Gonell, and others. Ultimately, the rioters’ actions caused the deaths of five police officers, and temporarily delayed the peaceful transition of power while our nation’s lawmakers sheltered in place, fearing for their lives. That’s what an insurrection looks like. That’s the kind of thing that calls for the Insurrection Act.

What did Trump do while all of this was unfolding? Nothing. I was deputy White House press secretary at the time, and I watched as the president spent hours watching the chaos unfold on live TV, and refused to lift a finger to help. If ever there was a time to send in the troops, that was it; instead, the officers standing in the breach were left to fend for themselves for hours while reinforcements and additional support were withheld. Sickened by it all, I resigned my post that same day.

So it’s pretty clear what’s going on here. Trump doesn’t want to invoke the Insurrection Act because he fears an actual insurrection or thinks the country is in imminent danger. This is nothing but a power play, plain and simple. He wants to wield the threat of troops in our streets in order to put down a protest that he views as illegitimate. It’s a classic strongman tactic, and Trump knows that there’s no one left in the GOP who will challenge him on it. So it’s up to the rest of us.

Trump gushing about the response to Tiananmen Square back in 1990 was a tell. We should have believed him when he told us who he was.

Sarah Matthews was deputy White House press secretary, and resigned on January 6. She is an Advisory Board Member and Spokeswoman for Home of the Brave, an initiative dedicated to exposing this administration’s corruption, cruelty, and lawlessness.