The Dictatorship
The stunning hypocrisy of red state leaders stepping up to help Trump take over D.C.
In one sense, the decisions of the governors of Ohio, Mississippi, South Carolina and West Virginia to send National Guard troops from their states to aid President Donald Trump’s authoritarian takeover of Washington, D.C., should not have surprised anyone. Like their GOP colleagues in Congress, these red-state executives are eager to show their fealty to the MAGA leader. But in another sense, it is a truly stunning development coming from politicians who love nothing more than to tout their allegiance to the Constitution and the Second Amendment.
Just five months ago, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey proclaimed such allegiance when he signed three pieces of legislation that his office said were “meant to protect the 2nd Amendment rights of West Virginians.” Morrisey said at the time: “As Governor, I will always support and defend West Virginians’ God-given constitutional rights. The bills I signed today further enshrine West Virginia’s strong support for the Second Amendment.”
This is not the first time that President Trump has tested the loyalty of red-state governors in this way.
But let’s compare the decisions of Morrissey, South Carolina’s Henry McMaster, Mississippi’s Tate Reeves and Ohio’s Mike DeWine to deploy their states’ National Guard with the language of the Second Amendment. It reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Note why the militia is needed: for the “security of a free State” [emphasis added]. That is hardly what Donald Trump’s use of the National Guard is designed to secure.
The GOP governors likely know that. But Trump carried all but seven of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties and won 55% of the popular vote. He received 58% of the vote in South Carolina and 70% in West Virginia, where he also carried every county. The governors were eager to make clear that they, as McMaster explainedstand “with President Trump as he works to restore law and order to our nation’s capital.” Or take Morrisey, who said“West Virginia is proud to stand with President Trump in his effort to restore pride and beauty to our nation’s capital.”
This is not the first time that Trump has tested the loyalty of red-state governors in this way. In June 2020, during the nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd, he asked state chief executives from across the country to send National Guard to Washington, D.C.
As The Washington Post reported at the time: “The request had the effect of cleaving state militias along partisan lines, according to interviews and internal Guard documents. While red states jumped to answer the president’s call, governors and Guard commanders in blue states were incredulous.”
“The result,” the Post continues, “was a deployment to the nation’s capital that military historians say appears to have been without precedent: Over 98 percent of the 3,800 troops that arrived in the District came from states with Republican governors.”
Five years later, the deployment of troops from Trump-loving states in the District of Columbia, where every one of Trump’s Democratic opponents has received over 90% of the vote and where Blacks make up almost 45% of the population, is no less disturbing. It looks like another effort to achieve “total domination” — as Trump put it in 2020 — in the least Trump friendly place in the country.
Alexander Hamilton thought it was important that states have their own military force.
“Total domination” by the federal government was hardly the rallying cry for the people who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Quite to the contrary. They had seen firsthand the British use military forces to subdue and oppress people in the colonies. And they feared “that the president would use standing armies to oppress the citizens, as the British had done, and turn us into a garrison state,” as Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., then serving in the House, wrote in 2020.
The drafters of the Declaration of Independence included among the British monarchy’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” the following: “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures; He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power;” and kept “large bodies of armed troops among us.”
That’s why people like Alexander Hamilton thought it was important that states have their own military force. They thought state militias would resist, not aid, the federal government, should it want to follow the British example.
Hamilton made this clear in 1788, before the ratification of the Constitution or the Second Amendment. “If standing armies,” he wrote, “are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia, in the body to whose care the protection of the State is committed, ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions.”
Hamilton hoped that militias controlled by the states would be all that would be necessary to assure peace in the new Republic and did not think that they ever would threaten liberty. They would, after all, be composed of “our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens.”
The National Guard had its origins in the militias about which Hamilton wrote. The Guard traces its start to 1636, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the first colonial militia.
Whatever their views on whether the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms, historians generally agree that one of the key purposes of the amendment was to ensure that states had the resources needed to resist encroachments on liberty perpetrated by the federal government. As Supreme Court Justice James McReynolds put it in 1939“In a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier.”
Troops from Ohio, South Carolina, Mississippi and West Virginia deployed in Washington are being asked to display the character of soldiers, not that of the “neighbors” that Hamilton envisioned. Hamilton thought that there would be no danger “from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits, and interests.”
Sending members of state National Guards to a place different in “feelings, sentiments, habits and interests” from the District of Columbia may please the president. But it should not please Americans eager to preserve freedom and honor the legacy of the Founding generation.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. The views expressed here do not represent Amherst College.
The Dictatorship
Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.
Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.
* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.
* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.
* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.
* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.
* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.
* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”
Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.
The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.
“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.
Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.
Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.
In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.
But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.
An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.
The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.
“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.
“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.
Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.
“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.
“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.
In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”
In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”
After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.
“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”
Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”
“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.
On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”
Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.
But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”
In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:
In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.
As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”
He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.
“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”
Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.
In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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