Trump’s War on Liberals Becomes a Shooting War

Listen To This Story

With Donald Trump there is always the motive, and then the ulterior motive, and then the ulterior ulterior motive — his very own psychological Russian dolls nested into each other. 

In the case of the occupation of Minneapolis by his ICE jackboots, the motive was putting on a big brutal show and making some political hay among the MAGAites who honestly believe that immigrants seeking a better life are an existential threat to America. 

The ulterior motive is the cruel joy of harassing, intimidating, and hurting those immigrants, and the vicarious thrill it gives Trump and his supporters. 

But then comes the ulterior ulterior motive, and that is something that has gone unnoticed, I think, in all the coverage of Minneapolis.

Donald Trump has launched a literal shooting war against liberals.

“Owning the libs” is the thread running through virtually all Trumpian policy and rhetoric. It effectively binds MAGAs together, to the point that they overlook, or even cheer, measures that work against their own interests.

Trump’s greatest hostility, his deepest vengeance, his most ferocious enmity have long been aimed at liberals. Liberals are just as dehumanized by the president and his right-wing stooges as immigrants are, which is not to say that — to date , at least — the two have been equally brutalized. 

This hate is no secret. Rather, it is a boast. “Owning the libs” is the thread running through virtually all Trumpian policy and rhetoric. It effectively binds MAGAs together, to the point that they overlook, or even cheer, measures that work against their own interests.

Trump’s Christmas message included a greeting to the “Radical Left Scum who are doing everything possible to destroy our Country.” He has labeled them “communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” and, of course, “domestic terrorists” — our very own Osama bin Ladens. 

And he has gone farther than name-calling — saying that some Democrats, a group of six legislators who issued a video advising members of the military to refuse to obey unlawful orders, should be arrested and “executed.” That’s right: killed.

Which is to say that I think the immigrants he despises may actually be collateral. If the assaults were primarily about immigrants, he wouldn’t have targeted only blue states and sent his troops to two of the more liberal states in the union, Minnesota and Maine, where, in the cities he targeted, he was sure to encounter liberal protesters, despite the fact that there are plenty of undocumented immigrants in red states too. 

And if the assaults were primarily about immigrants, ICE wouldn’t be focused on provoking the people who advocate for immigrants and want to protect them. 

Immigrants don’t threaten Trump; they are props for the spectacle. Immigrants can’t vote against Republicans or for Democrats, no matter what MAGA Republicans might think. 

But liberals do threaten Trump’s power, and they can vote against his Republican enablers or against him should he arrange to run for another (unconstitutional) term. Moreover, they can encourage others to vote against those enablers and against Trump. 

And it is liberals, not immigrants, who have attacked Trump’s destruction of America’s democratic values. Discrediting liberals, turning their fellow Americans against them, creating a narrative that liberals hate America and foment violence are among the basic planks of Trumpism. 

Stigmatizing the left is what right-wingers have always done — in Germany, in Russia, and here.

In this way, the whole deportation extravaganza closely resembles Trump’s January 6, 2021, attempted coup. He whips up his supporters into a frenzy. He convinces them that the survival of the country is at stake. He sends his deranged “army” into the field to wreak their vengeance on his liberal enemies — and, on January 6, even on his conservative enemy vice president — and lets the havoc ensue. 

Only this time he has a real occupation army, and this time they are fully locked and loaded.

So, yes, beating up immigrants may be great sport for the human dregs who disproportionately populate ICE. (Don’t forget that there is ICE recruitment at UFC events and gun shows.) But beating up and even murdering liberals is much better sport.

It is no accident that both Renee Good and Alex Pretti, murdered by ICE in Minneapolis, weren’t immigrants but US citizens. It is no accident that they were white. And it is no accident that they were, at least in the eyes of ICE, in the streets to support immigrants in the grand liberal tradition — a tradition that, as MAGA sees it, is, I submit, as bad as or worse than illegal immigration. 

Nor is it any accident that both Good and Pretti were low-key, non-confrontational people, who had the affect of liberals, which must have further stoked and legitimized the anger against them. The fact that Good was a woman also, I think, played strongly into her murder. If no white male MAGA Christian wants to be shown up by a liberal, none of these he-men can bear being shown up by a woman, and a lesbian to boot. 

I keep circling back to Renee Good’s last words to her subsequent murderer, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” And her murderer’s, Jonathan Ross’s, parting words, “Fucking bitch.” 

Or to Alex Pretti’s last words to the woman whom the ICE agents had knocked down and pepper-sprayed, “Are you OK?” And the mocking parting words of one ICE agent when bystanders expressed astonishment at the murder and its callousness: “Boo hoo.” 

That’s manhood in action. That’s owning the libs.

ICE certainly knew liberals would respond to the ICE dragnet — to the masks and weapons and body armor, to the specter of a jack-booted, hostile, occupying force. They counted on it. They taunted the protesters to do so. I think it is entirely fair to say that they wanted Good and Pretti to respond, and that they got enjoyment out of murdering them, which is why they were so quick on the trigger. 

These weren’t men trying to avoid violence. These were men eager to use it. Or, as two observers told The Atlantic, “It became clear fairly quickly that ICE is the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo boys. They’ve given them uniforms and let them run wild.”

And Donald Trump counted on that.

They had to disparage the victims because. . . well, because the victims were liberals, and one of them was a woman, and so they got what was coming to them. 

The hatred against these two liberals was so deep, so sinister, so beyond the pale of the most basic human decency that, even after the deaths of Good and Pretti, neither Trump, nor DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, nor Border Patrol honcho and ICE wrangler Greg Bovino, nor America’s Eichmann, Stephen Miller, could relent. 

They had to disparage the victims because. . . well, because the victims were liberals, and one of them was a woman, and so they got what was coming to them. 

And neither, finally, did the ICE agents relent or show the least remorse. In that same Atlantic article, Robert Worth recounts how one mourner placed a rose on a makeshift memorial to Good, and how an ICE agent then picked up the rose, stuck it in his lapel, and pretended to hand it to a female ICE agent as both of them laughed.

A dead liberal was a laughing matter. But wasn’t that the point, after all?