How many more Kyle Rittenhouses? How many more Jacob Blakes? The president has an idea

Donald Trump set out for Kenosha today, and spoke at a well-attended press conference — but he didn’t make his journey to comfort the family of 29-year-old Jacob Blake, a Black man left paralyzed after police shot him seven times in the back. (He couldn’t have anyway, since Blake’s father said that he didn’t want to “play politics” and meet with the president while his son’s life remained on the line. Trump, for his part, claimed that he was the one who refused the visit because the family “wanted to involve lawyers”.)

No, there would be no comfort for the Blake family in the wake of their relative’s shocking injuries. Instead, the commander-in-chief came to lecture.

This afternoon, Trump publicly bemoaned “the kind of violence we’ve seen in Portland and [Kenosha] and other places,” ignoring the fact that Kenosha’s protests were peaceful until a 17-year-old gunman named Kyle Rittenhouse traveled across state lines to kill two protesters and wound a third. Indeed, Trump had already defended Rittenhouse at an earlier press conference, saying that Rittenhouse probably would’ve been killed if he didn’t shoot the protesters he clashed with.

Responding to a reporter at an event alongside law enforcement officials earlier today, the president refused to even acknowledge the existence of systemic racism, saying only that “people want law and order."

After days of silence that saw President Donald Trump initially refuse to condemn Rittenhouse’s premeditated violence against peaceful protesters and then eventually equivocate about it, it may seem strange that Trump would spend a day blaming protesters for their own deaths. But that shouldn’t be surprising — as Trump’s dissent-free press conference made clear, the White House isn’t interested in representing those Americans.

It was an event billed as a discussion of America’s racial justice protests, but Trump refused to include a single voice from any racial justice organization. Speaking to a panel almost entirely made up of police officials, he barely discussed the shooting that left Blake paralyzed, except to acknowledge that he has yet to reach out to anyone in Blake’s family.

For alt-right hate groups like the Proud Boys, Trump’s public remarks are the clearest sign yet that the White House views violent pro-Trump mobs as valuable political allies. Trump’s mishandling of Kenosha and Portland reveals a president who mourns the deaths of his supporters while justifying the murders of his critics. In Trumpworld, two dead racial justice activists means two fewer threats against the unceasing march of Trumpism.

In the twisted world of vigilantes like Rittenhouse or the Proud Boys, opposition to Trump’s agenda is equivalent to sedition. Protesters and journalists are tarred as “Marxists” and “globalists,” “enemies of the state,” and “lügenpresse” — the lying press. Violence against them is excused at the highest levels of government.

And unlike past Nixonian efforts to demonize protesters through coded language and whisper campaigns, the most heated rhetoric today comes from Trump himself.

Trump’s attempts to stir the pot comes with real-world consequences. When the FBI compiled their 2019 year-end report on hate crimes in America, they were shocked to find attacks against religious and racial minorities hit a 16-year high under the Trump administration. Latinos, singled out by Trump since the moment his campaign launched in 2015, are disproportionately bearing the bloody cost of those hate crimes.

Gone are the empty condemnations of politically motivated violence deployed by the White House after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville left Heather Heyer dead and an out-of-state neo-Nazi in jail. Now, more assured than ever of his lockstep support among Washington Republicans, Trump has launched the entire GOP down the grim path of enabling open-air political violence to terrify and suppress opposition. Even those once regarded as Trump skeptics have fallen in line with the GOP’s open embrace of extrajudicial political murder.

“It is a tragedy," Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson told CNN’s Dana Bash days after Rittenhouse’s motivations became public knowledge. Over several painful minutes of live television, Johnson repeatedly refused to condemn Rittenhouse or his actions directly.

Tucker Carlson, America’s highest-rated and most-watched conservative commentator, went a step further, celebrating Rittenhouse’s act of terrorism for “maintain[ing] order when no one else would.” Just yesterday, Carlson devoted an extended segment to gaming out possible excuses for Rittenhouse’s premeditated assassination campaign. Not a word was said in condolence to the victims’ families.

Anyone hoping for an emergency brake on the GOP’s express train to strongman thuggery ought to look elsewhere. After four years, the Trump administration has regressed from dismissing the legitimacy of racial justice protests to refusing to acknowledge their existence at all. Wittingly or not, voters have given Trump’s white supremacist contingent an inch of political rope. Now we’re all at risk of swinging.

Fortunately the power rests with regular Americans to steer their government away from the darkest impulses of state impunity. The United States cannot endure four more years of a president and a political party who turn the forces of violence and brutality against political opponents. In their effort to preserve electoral dominance at all costs, Republicans have brought about a great moment of national moral reckoning.

Americans witnessing unprecedented, Trump-amplified violence in the streets of Kenosha and Portland understand how easily that violence could be turned on anyone who publicly bruises the presidential ego. If Trump’s supporters are gleefully willing to engage in violence against peaceful protesters, they are equally willing to engage in violence against any protest.

We don’t need to imagine such a nightmare scenario: four years ago, the idea of an American president justifying violence against his critics would have seemed the stuff of an alternate reality. But it is our reality, and our actions in November alone determine whether the United States returns to the structures of democracy or plunges headlong into authoritarian unrest.