The left is itching for a civil war. Leftist leaders have made it clear now that they want to see people rioting in the streets against President Trump’s policies. This will create, they hope, a win-win situation for them: if Trump clamps down on the rioting, they’ll ramp up their rhetoric, if that rhetoric can indeed be made any more shrill and hysterical than it is now, about how Trump is a dictator in the making. If, on the other hand, Trump does not or cannot rein in the street thugs, the Democrats will campaign in 2028 on the promise to restore order, and if they win, they will do exactly that. They’ll resume the move toward authoritarianism that they so energetically pursued during the four years of Old Joe Biden’s autopen presidency.
The latest Democrat to make clear his desire for war in the streets to break out is Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. Fox News reported Thursday that Johnson based his implicit call for violence upon a lie, saying: "The fact that the President of the United States of America is cutting off food supply and medicine to working people and families across this country — that is an act of war." Trump is not, of course, cutting off food and medicine to anyone. He is attempting, amid fierce Democrat opposition, to trim rampant waste and fraud from the federal government.
Nevertheless, when Johnson said that what Trump was doing amounted to an “act of war,” he was issuing an oblique but unmistakable call to arms. An act of war, after all, requires defense forces, and Johnson was clearly trying to rally them, adding: "And we're going to need leaders who are prepared and willing to stand up for working people, because this battle has reached our front doors all across America where people are struggling and suffering. And in order to alleviate that pain and discomfort, it's going to require bold leadership. We can't tippy toe."
Johnson also tapped into one of the Democrats’ favorite themes, the “Trump is Hitler” hysteria. Johnson “cited Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s State of the State address in February, which referenced how it ‘took the Nazi’s one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a Constitutional Republic.’" By that score, Trump is a highly inefficient National Socialist, as he has been president (as of this writing) for four years, four months, and eleven days, and the constitutional republic is still intact.
Nevertheless, Johnson leaned heavily into the hope that his audience was too ignorant and too thoroughly propagandized to know how ridiculous what he was saying really was. "Governor Pritzker,” he declared, “offered up a warning. You have a president that is cutting off medicine and food, a president that is working to erase culture. I mean, you can't make this up. He's doing it in plain sight." Yet since Trump is not doing those things, it’s clear: Johnson did make it up.
Going back to his Trump-is-Hitler nonsense, Johnson claimed that Trump is "carry[ing] out the playbook that was done against an entire people-group. He’s doing it right here in this country, against working people, erasing Black folks from museums and the history and the culture. So, when you ask how we balance that, you have to fight it and resist it with everything that's in you."
Related: Oh, the Hypocrisy: Leftist Leaders Condemn the D.C. Jewish Museum Murders
Johnson was referring to the fact that on March 27, Trump issued an executive order to combat the “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” That includes the removal of a few publicly-funded exhibits pushing Critical Race Theory and race hatred, which means, of course, for race hucksters such as Johnson, that Trump is an evil racist.
DOGE, according to Johnson, was all part of Trump’s nefarious plan to make himself a dictator: "The President of the United States of America is capturing the hopes and aspirations of working people and holding us hostage as he works to implement and annihilate democracy." Now wait a minute, Johnson. The president is trying to cut waste and fraud and make the government more efficient. In the process, if he succeeds, the government will grow smaller. But doesn’t a dictator want a large, all-encompassing government, so that he is better able to control everything?
I know: never look for clear thinking from the left. But watch for the violence on the streets, if Brandon Johnson gets his way.
