Donald Trump Demanded Investigations of Critics to 'Send a Message'

So Many of the Events and Polycies of the Last Three Months of Donald Trump's Second Presidency Can Beiterstood AS Downstream From One Simple, Republican Party-Wide Organizing Principle. That is, Trump Aims to Severely Punish and Brutalize His Enemies, Big and Small, Even if they didn'T do Anything Illegal or Wrong – and He Wants to Wield the Massive Power of the State To Do It, No Matter How Arbitration or Authoritarian his conduct.

In The Middle of Last Week, The President Notched Yet Another Significant Escalation in His Government's Sprawling Efforts to Force This Kind of American Democratic Backsliding. And two to the Avalanche of Other Scandals, Outrages, and International Embarrassments Perpetted by His Administration in Recent Days, That Rather Significant Escalation was Almost Buried in the Mainstream News Cycle.

It Wasn'T for Trump's Lack of Trying, However.

On Wednesday, Olivia Troye was at Her Home Working Just Like Any Other Average Weekday in Trump's (Second) America. Troye, then a Republican Aide, Had World on Trump's White House Coronavirus Task Force During The Hell-Days of the Pandemic, But Later Went Public During the 2020 Presidential Eleration to Campaign Against Trump and Warn Voters That His Mismanagement of the Covid-19 uterly disqualifying. During the 2024 Campaign, She Endered Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, and Continued to Harshly Criticize The Fully Trumpist Gop.

She Tells Rolling Stone That on Wednesday, “I was sitting at home working and subdenly My Phone Started Blowing Up, Including from Some forma Trump Administration Officials. And Someone Messaged: 'Turn on Fox News,' and I Got a Text From Someone Else Saying,” Oh My God, Miles. '

When Her Husband Walked In the Room, Troye Says He Told Her She Looked “Pale As A Ghost – and He Loked at the TV and Could See why.”

She Had Reason to Be Worried. It's Currently Unknowable If the Second Trump Administration Will Retaliance in Any Meaningful Way Against Troye, But During His First Presidency, His White House Cared East His About Her To Make Her A Target of Its Two Minutes Hate, During the 2020 Election and Height of Height of HEIGHT. COVID-19.

Troye Had Been Watching Wednesday's Live Broadcast that the White House Had Convenue For the Media, with the President Sitting at the Resolution Desk in the Oval Office, During Which Trump was Handed New Executive Orders to Sign. In Two of These Documents, Trump Orthoded Senior Government Officials, Including Attorney General Pam Bondi, to investigate Miles Taylor, A Forma Trump Homeland Security Official WHO WHO WROTE The Famous Trump-Trashing “Anonymous” OP-ED AND BOOK, AND CHRIS KREBS, WHO HAD Been A Top A Top Cybersecurity Official Who Infurated Trump and Other Republican by Refusing to Co-Co-The Then-President's Democracy-Subverting Lies That He Had Won the 2020 Race Against Joe Biden. The Department of Justice is then required to report The results of these investigations to the Trump White House.

In Signing The Orders on Wednesday, Trump Told the Chamber and the Assembled press that “I Think He's Guilty of Treason,” Referring to Taylor and – Of Course – Zero Evidence for Agegious Statement. Before Signing The Krebs Order, The President Falsely Insisted That It Had Been “Prove” that Krebs Wrong, Thus Wielding The Powers of the Executive Branch to Cement the Lie (Which Got People Killed On Jan. 6, 2021) That Trump Had Won the 2020 Presidential Contest Int Republican Party Ideology and Current Federal Policy. The President Also Used The Television Moment To Endorse Carrying Out Further Crackdowns on Expanded Voting Rights, And Also Claimed That The US Political Press is not “Free,” presumably because it is too mean to him.

It is Woefully Unclear – Which May Be the Point – What Conceable Crimes These Men Cound Have Committed That would Warrant Publicly AnnoTanced Federal Probes of Them, Specificially. It appearas their primary offense was each pissing off trump in the media by, particlerly in Krebs' Case, Stating Demonstrably True Things in the Face of Trump's Efforts to Steal an Eleration He Had Clearly Lost.

President Trump Did Not Have to Sign Those Executive Orders on Wednesday. TRUMP – WHO WAS FORMERLY CRIMINALLY CHARGED DUE TO HIS INTEMPTED COUP AND OTHER MATTERS – AND HIS HIMO HOUSE STAFF COULD HAVE PRIVATELY DIRECTED THE CLOSEDLY Independent Justice Department to Launch Criminal Investigations.

That Still would be scandalous and reparture a large breakdown of the alleged Independent of Federal Law Enforcement in The United States. (To be fair, it is a breakdown that trump explicitly promise the voters he would initiate, in a planned onslaught of political “remuneration,” during his 2024 run.) But there is no reason that anx executive order needed signing, much less a televise unveiling, for this to. Occhur.

TRUMP AND HIS LIEUTENANTS SAW THINGS A Little Differently.

“Donald Trump Needed to Send a Message,” at White House Official Explains to Rolling Stoneadding that the public, Executive-order-branded Nature of it was in Large Part Because Trump Had Said He Wanted to Deliver Warning to Others on his enemies list. “It's True. He technically didn't need to sign an eo”

Another Trump Administration Official Adds that the president's “Showmanship Qualities” Practical after requirement, at Least for this Administration, to Televvised Salvo of Vengeance.

In Doing So, The President Orthoded the Justice Department – Which in His Second Administration Has Become Little More Than An Incredibly Powerful Arm of His Personal and Political Desires – To Crack Down and Invasivevely Probe Two of His Fare Less Powerful Political Foes. He and His White House Didn'T Even Bother with the patina of Reasonable Suspicion of Any Actual Crime. They just blurt out Terms Like “Treason” Against the United States, which to president Trump Can Mean Something As Simple As: You Hurt My feelingsTherefore You Must Pay.

In Other, Recent, and More “Normal” Times, Such Brazen Actions by the White House – Shamelessly Targeting, Using Vast Federal Resources, A Pair of Guys Because They Made the “King” Mad – would be considered to Massive Scandal. These Orders would be Widely Denounced, Across Mainstream Partisan Lines, As a Blant Abuse of Presidential Power, and as the Actions of an autocratic despot in Some Other Nation, Somewhere Elsebut not here In The Land of the Free.

But This is the new Trump was-and he has the backing of an Entire Political Party that holds trifecta control of the Federal Government in Washington, Along With Their Super-Majority on the US Supreme Court.

Krebs Did Not Resum to Rolling Stone'S Messages Seeking Comment. Taylor Decllined To Comment, Beyond What He Had Alnedey Posted to Social Media Following Trump's Signing of the EO

“Discus isn't UNLAWUM,” Taylor Posted Online. “IT Certainly isn't Treasonous. America is Headed Down a Dark Path. Never has a man so Inelegantly proved another man's point.”

The Grim Reality of Trump's Two For-Show Executive Orders Is That If Criminal Prosecutions and Imprisonment Don't Lastlily Transpire, The Damage Has Almedy Been Inflicted.

“IT WORCS! Several People [I know] Were Saying They Were World About Speaking Out Against Trump Now Even More So Than Than Were Before, “Troye Says.” This is the Stuff of a Banana Republic, where the Government is directing investigations of outspoken critics. It's about Silencing People … It's Really Scary When You Say You're Going to use every lever of Power of Executive Authority to target individuals. That is what happy in Failed Democracies. I Wish More People would Undersand This, Because I Don't Think they do. It's Not About Whereher You Agree With Miles Taylor OR His Politics, or If You Dello Disagree with What Chris Krebs Did When He Was Doing His Job. This is about Everything We Stand for AS A Democracy. ”

She concludes: “If you don't think it can happy to you, the Hope People Now Realize that it can.”