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MARTIAL LAW! THE RESISTANCE GOES FULL FEVER SWAMP. You might view President Trump's deployment of Department of Homeland Security officers to protect the federal courthouse in Portland from rioting mobs as an exercise in federal law enforcement around an important federal facility. After all, the Mark O. Hatfield courthouse has been under steady attack from rioters setting fires, breaking down barriers, shooting fireworks, throwing debris, and more for 50-plus nights.
The need for federal protection in a small, well-defined area of Portland is particularly urgent because local authorities have essentially sided with the rioters against the federal government, demanding that federal law enforcement leave the area while also making no effort to protect it.
So you might see DHS involvement as necessary. But many in the Resistance -- those most adamantly opposed to the president in politics and media -- see something different. In their view, Portland is a dress rehearsal for President Trump to declare martial law and cancel or nullify this November's election. Yes, really.
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"If a line is not drawn in the sand right now, America may be staring down the barrel of martial law in the middle of a presidential election," Washington State Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden told the Senate Intelligence Committee this week. "My hometown of Portland has been invaded by militarized federal law enforcement."
The martial law speculation is spreading through some media outlets. On MSNBC's "Morning Joe on Tuesday," commentator John Heilemann said: "I don't want to be overly alarmist about this, but I think this is the time to be alarmist, knowing where Donald Trump stands right now politically, understanding where we are headed in this election, I think we are looking at potentially a trial run for a kind of, a genuine attempt to, through intimidation, and potentially through force, to try to steal this election."
"This is what would happen if you were an authoritarian president who was preparing to resist a loss in the election," Heilemann continued on Thursday. "You would be saying the things Donald Trump is saying, and you would be gradually rolling out federal police power into the states against the wishes of the mayors and governors in question. This is how it would happen. This is how the movie would play out. And anybody who's not looking at this with a state of alarm and concern and worried about, is this president going to employ, formally, martial law, at some point...Is there anybody, having watched Donald Trump for the last three and a half years, who doesn't think Donald Trump would try to employ martial law if he thought that he was the only way he could stay in power?"
Some foresee a huge battle inside the government when the president tries to declare martial law. "There are significant forces, including the military, the National Guard, the FBI, that would probably oppose any outright effort by Trump to declare something like martial law and cancel the election outcome," wrote Tufts University professor and Washington Post contributor Daniel Drezner this week. "But the fact that I had to even write that last sentence scares the bejeezus out of me."
What's going on? "The Left has gone Full Pizzagate," tweeted Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, referring to the crazy 2016 conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of the basement of a Washington, DC pizza restaurant. Back then, the bizarre theorizing was the work of Alex Jones and his ilk. Now, the martial law talk is coming from the heart of Democratic politics and media. Don't expect it to let up anytime soon.
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