President Donald Trump reportedly launched into an “unhinged” meltdown during an emergency conference call this week with governors from around the United States. During the call, he reportedly demanded violence and lengthy jail times for protesters, as if he imagines that he’s a dictator in a police state. The vast majority of demonstrators around the country who’ve recently turned out against police brutality have been peaceful, but Trump is apparently enraged anyway. The conference call meltdown, it’s worth noting, came the day after Trump was taken to a bunker in the White House as protests raged outside.
I'm in touch with someone who's on the governors' call with President Trump right now. They and others listening in are alarmed. The president is urging governors to take back the streets, not be "weak," and use force as the nation faces growing racial unrest.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 1, 2020
According to audio of the call obtained by outlets including CBS News, Trump called on governors to “dominate” protesters, suggesting that he wants to terrorize his political opponents with the excuse of keeping the peace in service of his “greatness.” He said, in part:
‘You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate… Washington was under very good control, but we’re going to have it under much more control. We’re going to pull in thousands of people… You’ve got to arrest people, you have to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years and you’ll never see this stuff again.’
In other words, Trump is, by all appearances, flatly refusing to engage with the substance of the demonstrations around the country, many of which have been peaceful. Instead, he’s winding himself up into a dangerous rage — one person who heard the Monday conference call unfold firsthand called the president’s behavior “unhinged,” CBS reporter Ed O’Keefe notes. Trump reportedly told governors they’re “making a mistake because you’re making yourselves look like fools,” adding: “We can’t be a push over. And we have all the resources – it’s not like we don’t have the resources. So, I don’t know what you’re doing.” He apparently wants to brutalize protesters.
Trump also threatened to “activate Bill Barr and activate him very strongly,” although it’s unclear what precisely that process would even entail, since yet again, the egomaniacal president has resorted to a bizarre word salad in an attempt to get his point across.
He sounds like a Fox News pundit, which makes sense, given what he's watching. https://t.co/mcWA0BLVi5
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 1, 2020
