Trump declares “people are saying” they’d like a dictator, says Rolling Stone.
Trump was answering questions about his administration’s military takeover of Washington, D.C., which he has said he will likely expand to other cities, including Chicago. “As you know, Chicago is a killing field right now, and they don’t acknowledge it,” the president said, referring to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and other Democrats who don’t want Trump to send troops into the city. “They say, ‘We don’t need him! Freedom! Freedom! He’s a dictator! He’s a dictator!’”
“A lot of people are saying maybe we’d like a dictator,” Trump then asserted, before claiming he doesn’t want a dictatorship. “I’m not a dictator,” he said. “I’m a man with common sense and a smart person.”
This is Trump’s way of arguing that he’s not a dictator if he’s ruling like one by popular demand.
By now you’ve probably head that Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been detained again. Trump wants him deported to Uganda. To recap, Abrego Garcia was returned from El Salvador in June to face trial for some dubious charges the DOJ was able to dredge up. While awaiting trial in a Tennessee jail, DoJ lawyers pressured him to take a plea deal or risk being deported again. He refused. He was released three days ago and allowed to go home to Maryland awaiting trial. Then this happened:
Kilmar Abrego Garcia has never set foot in Uganda, but President Donald Trump’s administration is currently “processing” his deportation to the East African nation after rearresting him at a mandated check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Abrego Garcia’s renewed detention is the latest escalation by the Trump administration in their campaign against the Maryland father they wrongfully deported to El Salvador earlier this year, before bringing him back to the U.S. to face new charges in Tennessee.
The arrest was expected given that the Department of Homeland Security had openly stated that it would seek to remove Abrego Garcia should he be let out on bail in the Tennessee case.
“Today, [DHS Secretary Kristi Noem] announced that ICE arrested Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He will be processed for removal to Uganda,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X.
It’s fairly obvious the DoJ doesn’t think it can get a guilty verdict against him, and that would be a huge embarrassment to Trump. So they have to disappear him again.
And I understand Chicago is next.
Josh Marshall has something to say about the resistance. See No Kings, No Occupations — Toward a Democratic Opposition Politics. Here’s a chunk of it:
Under the American constitutional order, states and localities are entitled to local control of civil policing, administration of elections and various other features of state and local government. President Trump is trying to upend that part of the federal order not because he thinks he can run this or that local government service or administration any better, but to deprive those states and localities of their liberty and right to self-government. Because he wants that power for himself.
I’m making these general points because the opposition to these actions is deeply embedded in American civic culture — citizens’ basic understanding of what they’re entitled to and what they think is right. So shaping political actions explicitly around opposition to it is not only right and merited but the basis of opposition with the best shot at success. Whether one thing or another violates the Posse Comitatus Act is good for lawyers to know for the purposes of wrenching whatever minimum is possible out of a corrupted judiciary. But it’s not the basis of any opposition. And in political terms it’s basically a distraction. Most Americans intuitively know this isn’t the deal on which our government is based and they don’t like it. Again, it’s deeply woven into the fabric of the country’s civic tradition. It wouldn’t become fine just become some dork at the Claremont Institute came up with some over-clever interpretation of law or the Constitution that made it fine. All that is beside the point.
In this sense Trump and his degenerate advisors are doing us a favor by making face masks a part of the standard ICE and CBP uniform. It marks them out as something different. They’re not soldiers precisely. But they are occupiers. They function in the same way. Masks are for secret police and criminal gangs. They have no place in any kind of legitimate policing authority.
These are all the makings of a powerful opposition politics and Democrats must not run away from it. It’s not only critical to the future of American democracy and civic freedom. It could not be more mainstream, something that appeals to a broad range of the American electorate, across race and ethnicities, regions and ideologies.
Trump is un-American. What he’s doing is un-American. That should be easy to understand.
I recommend reading (or listening to) Greg Sargent’s interview of Will Stancil, “a policy researcher and attorney in Minneapolis who’s been a relentless online critic of the Democratic Party’s failure to rise to this moment.” I had never heard of Stencil, but he’s got some interesting things to say. Much of the interview centers on Gavin Newsom’s recent social media counteroffensive.
I think that what Newsom is doing is he’s finally doing what Democrats should have been doing for a decade. There is a singular factor in American politics since probably 2015 or so, and that’s Donald Trump. He’s defined American politics since 2015. And what we have seen, especially since Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, is that Democrats have been afraid to talk about it directly. They beat around the bush. They talk about how they want to work with Trump. They talk about how they want to focus on kitchen-table issues, they want to lower prices. They’re afraid of being accused of having Trump derangement syndrome. They’ll be afraid of being accused of focusing on nothing else. They’re afraid of being accused of abandoning the working man.
In the meantime, in the country that I’ve lived in—in the real world—everything has revolved around Trump. Everything has been propelled forward by the choices he’s making, the things he’s done. Even when he’s out of office, this has largely been the case. And so finally, we have a Democrat who seems to have thrown those worries to the wind. He seems to be saying, I don’t care if you think I’m obsessed. It’s worth being obsessed. This is scary stuff. This is a scary man. He’s going to ruin our country. And I’m going to fight him as if I believe that was true. And it’s striking. And what I also think is interesting about it is that it’s working.
See also Tom Nichols, MAGA World Is So Close to Getting It at The Atlantic and Tim Walz being Tim Walz.
Tim Walz: “Think of how easy it would be to be a damn Republican. ‘Oh, what should I wear today? This stupid frickin’ red hat. What should I say today? I don’t know, just make sure it’s cruel. Who do we listen to? That guy — the felon in the White House.'”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 25, 2025 at 12:30 PM
On my frequent reading list is Robert Hubbell's substack. He's a retired attorney, who took to writing about politics to explain things and calm down his relatives. They passed his emails around to friends, and it took off from there.
He explains that DC is different from Chicago (or LA or NYC…) in Don't be rattled by Trump's Saber-Rattling
That said, I'm convinced Trump and his billionaire backers want a war, pitting each of us against each other. Hence the issuing of guns to the troops in DC. It's a final distraction while they pillage as much as they can from this country. It's the logical endpoint of what Fox News and the like have been encouraging, like forever.
It's up to the rest of us to not get sucked in.
"And I understand Chicago is next"
That's what diaper don says? This of course is not about law enforcement or crime it is about starting a race war that will lead to Marshal law. Crime is just a cover for what will eventually happen. I wish the democrats would wake the fuck up and call this what it is. I keep hearing them spout numbers that crime is down from last year. It may be but here in Chicago crime is out of control, we have people crashing into stores and looting what is inside two, three sometimes four, five times a day. Every month or so we have a "teen takeover" were hordes of wild youth takeover a city block and trash vehicles and generally scare the shit out of everyone. The police just stand there and watch. You won't see this covered anywhere in the corporate media except FAUX news but it is covered here on our local news every day. The mayor and the Chicago police don't really do anything to either prevent what is happening or end it. So when the troops come to Chicago there will be a confrontation that will lead to a riot and the democrats will be caught flatfooted still spouting the crime statistics. Call this what it is an egomaniacal racist looking to start a race war enabled by incompetent mayors and uninterested police departments. It's coming soon.
Every month or so we have a "teen takeover" were hordes of wild youth takeover a city block and trash vehicles and generally scare the shit out of everyone. The police just stand there and watch.
Why do the police just stand there and watch? You would think hordes of wild youth would be right up the cops' alley. Do you have a theory about their inaction? I'm genuinely curious.
Well much of it is at the direction of the mayor, he doesn't want them arrested. The Chicago police (many police departments) in general have pretty much stopped policing since George Floyd. But the teen takeovers have been specifically targeted by the mayor, he thinks they just need something else to do, which is some cases may be true but when people are breaking the law and destroying property they need to be arrested. Some of the scenes I've seen, those kids don't want something else to do, they want to destroy shit. Chicago is a mess, we have what qualifies as a mass shooting (4 or more victims) almost every day. The media reports on the shootings and every reports ends with "police do not have anyone in custody at this time". The streets are full of guns many of them fully automatic and the cops are hiding. If troops come to Chicago Stump will get the bloodshed he is looking for, I have no doubt.
Monday night is Maddow night. Outrage is her forte. She has more outrageous material than airtime this week.
And Netanyahu's slow rolling genocide continues with another 20 exterminated total including a half a dozen journalists in a hospital setting. Desecration on top of war crimes by barbarians masquerading as monotheists wreaking havoc on other barbarians masquerading as monotheists. Who will triage all this horror?
Gavin Newsom Has Renamed "MAGA"
Taking the joke to the next level. Genius marketing.
Abrego Garcia is the authoritarian atrocity of the day. He was released to his family pending trial for what looks like a very weak charge. He was picked up for deportation to Uganda. Garcia contends he was offered and accepted deportation to Costa Rico but ICE will only send Garcia there if he pleads guilty to a charge (I think) he can beat in court. But if he tries to plead his case in court, he won't get the chance because he'll be in Uganda.
A judge appointed by Obama he ordered a halt to deportation to anywhere until his status is evaluated. But the judge is not supportive of the strong-arm tactics of trying to force Garcia to plead guilty.
I don't see Garcia as a saint or a villain. He's getting kicked around like a soccer ball for no good reason. That's true in varying degrees to thousands of residents who have done little to nothing wrong.
"He's getting kicked around like a soccer ball for no good reason"
Right it's not a good reason but the reason is simple, he was deported to El Salvador by mistake. Stump and his brown shirts had to admit they made a mistake and also said he was never coming back to the US. Well he’s back and now Garcia will have to pay for that mistake. The GOP can never be wrong!
Gang Of Pathetically Privileged Pedophiles Pretending Perfection
For those who like metaphor and a gifted story-teller, The Circus Goes on Tour: What Can We Expect?
People like her are self-censoring themselves on YouTube (getting your videos or channel pulled over politics is a real thing), so they turn to using code words. This women happens to be good at it.
Other YouTubers have been doing this for awhile. Instead of talking about protests, they talk about "festivals" or "parades", innocuous substitutions. Commenters get into the act. Someone left a note saying they were from "Apple City" (I took to mean San Jose and surroundings). I responded by saying I was from "the city of sinners". And so it goes.