Yet Another Week of Trump Failing to Be an Actual Authoritarian

Last week began with one of the ugliest—and potentially most dangerous—spectacles of Donald Trump’s presidency: the nation’s leader, having declared himself “your president of law and order,” striding across a park violently cleared of peaceful protesters by police firing chemical irritants.

Within a week, however, the Trump administration’s response to the nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd had devolved into a bleak farce. While the attorney general insisting that pepper spray is not a chemical (it is), the president was busy at former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell for endorsing Trump’s Democratic rival for the presidency. Meanwhile, the thousands of National Guard troops who had been dramatically deployed to Washington, D.C., were returning home, and the extensive new fencing the barriers with artwork and protest signs.