Trump, Republicans reach for familiar tropes as poll numbers dive

With thousands of National Guardsmen and Marines descending on Los Angeles because (checks notes) someone set a car on fire, the narrative from the right is predictable in the face of growing public resentment to them: send in the hammers all in riot gear with tear gas canisters, flash bombs and dressed in riot gear and foment chaos to create a spectacle for their base.

It's a trope as old (older, actually) than this 51-year old podcaster. It famously backfired in Selma, Alabama when the television brought the scene into living rooms across the country. In 2025, with divided media and a hyper-partisan political landscape, it's still becoming clear Americans actually are re-remembering they didn't care much for Trump's brand of chaos even before COVID-19. Pretty damning Quinnipiac poll numbers bear that out.

Back to the familiar "tough talk bravado" from empty suit Republicans: Tuesday it was Trump, himself, warning protestors of his military parade there'd be 'heavy force' used against them. Meanwhile, here in Georgia, both the governor and attorney general are (predictably) using loaded rhetoric - leading with it, even - to lay the foundation for the upcoming 'No Kings' and Juneteenth rallies to be potential powder kegs.

It's all they know; it's all conservatives going back to the Civil Rights era have ever known. It's also a sign that they're losing grip on narratives aplenty. Again, those Quinnipiac poll numbers.

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Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth - both clearly not white nationalists - got back to re-renaming military bases to undo the removal of names honoring Confederate leaders by finding other U.S. veterans with identical last names, even going so far as to find a last name starts with an "A" and a "P" so "A.P. Hill" could return as a base name.

The level of pettiness, mixed with backhanded honoring and slaps-in-the-face to the family of those who'd had bases re-named for them three years ago is ... astounding.

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Lastly, I have a new Instagram crush; an Arkansas poet named Robert Arnold who's calling out ICE raids and the L.A. 'theater' to questioning what became of the proud, hardworking 'southern men' that smalled BS from slick-haired northerner grifters like the Trumps, and I just felt the need to share his wisdom and biting commentary with y'all.