Transcript: Angry Trump’s Threats Go Haywire as Damning ICE Video Hits

Sargent: Just to close this out, I think the way I would put that is that they think the supercharging of all these violent tensions and malignancies among Americans, among ethnic group against ethnic group, American against American, creates the conditions for their type of politics to take hold.

I don’t know whether Trump really thinks it through that way, but I’m reasonably certain that Stephen Miller very much does. At bottom though, I think Miller clearly wants Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. There’s some video out there that never gets talked about where, and I think this is the only time Miller has been asked this. He was asked a number of months ago: Have you discussed invoking the Insurrection Act with Donald Trump? And he just kind of hemmed and hawed and wouldn’t answer the question.

I’m not in his head, as you say, but I’m pretty sure that he is quietly whispering in Donald Trump’s ear that the time has come to invoke it. And so you can hear in Miller’s rhetoric, he uses all sorts of language that really is deeply kind of shaped around the idea of getting Trump to that place. And he’s trying to get Trump to invoke it, and Trump hasn’t done it yet, but it is something that Miller wants and he thinks this sort of turmoil creates the conditions for that.

Follman: I think that’s right. I think that that it is a very serious possibility and something that that Miller and others around Trump perhaps want to see happen, really ultimately, I think, as a furtherance of maximizing his power and his control, this idea of maximizing the unitary executive theory that Trump’s in charge. You know, Congress is no longer in charge, the courts are no longer in charge, no one else has a say, he’s the president, he can do whatever he wants.

And so using the Insurrection Act would be another expression of that predicated on, I think, this kind of rising tension and violence and chaos that we’re seeing, largely perpetrated by the operations that they’re carrying out with ICE. So in that sense, yes, I think if we look at what they’re doing, if we look at the pattern of rhetoric, we can say this is a very serious prospect now that they’re considering.

Whether or not they’ll take that step, I don’t know. I mean, it is an extreme thing to do and it will cause a lot of knock-on effects and I think unknown effects and they can’t ultimately control what they may unleash if they do that. So hopefully they won’t, but we’ll have to see.

Sargent: I agree 100 percent, Mark Follman. I really think it’s a very reasonable possibility that they’ll go for it. Folks, if you enjoyed this, make sure to check out Mark’s work over at Mother Jones, including his new piece. Mark Follman, great to talk to you, man. Thanks for coming on.

Follman: Yeah, thanks for having me. Enjoyed it.