Trump Has Imprisoned Himself in the White House

Trump Has Imprisoned Himself in the White House

The president is trying to project strength, but instead is betraying weakness.


David A. Graham, Staff writer at The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/trump-built-wall-around-himself/612664/

"SNIP......

President Donald Trump is trapped inside the White House, as a tall and imposing wall is erected around him, and prison guards stand watch.

The fencing is intended to keep other people out, of course, and to provide security for the White House. But walls don’t just keep people out—they keep people in too, a reality dramatized by the fact that some of those standing watch are officers of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Unlike a true prisoner, Trump can get out, but on Monday, a simple walk down the block from his house required a massive deployment of riot police and pepper balls.

It makes sense that Trump, who won the presidency in part on his promise to build a wall at the southern United States border, would gravitate to the same solution for the White House. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he warned of chaos seeping into the country from Mexico; now he sees the chaos creeping toward his own lawn. (This sequence is not much of an endorsement of his claims to be a “law and order” president.)

The administration has undertaken a contradictory dual strategy. On the one hand, as my colleague Anne Applebaum writes, the president wants to gin up fear among people far from the protests. On the other hand, he wants to show that he has matters under control. To that end, Attorney General William Barr has aimed to “flood the zone” in Washington, D.C.(Barr seems to be leading the effort in part because, while Pentagon leaders blanch at Trump’s attempts to send the military into the streets, Barr has a vast legion of law-enforcement officers at his command, and shares few of the compunctions of the military brass.)

......SNIP"