DIRE WARNING: Why These Governors Worry Trump is Instigating Martial Law - Thom Hartmann

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1. Donald Trump wants to be a Warlord.

"if you wanted to drive the country into literal disunion it’s hard to imagine what you’d do differently than what he is doing right now. He is both rhetorically and (with increasing intensity) literally unleashing the U.S. military on the strongest bastions of opposition to his government (basically blue cities in blue states). He is also canceling more and more of the funding the federal government gives to those states, despite the fact that it is disproportionately funded by taxes from those states. This is definitionally fairly close to warlordism, a broken state in which the leader holds on to power, if not legitimacy, by hoarding state resources for loyalists and depriving opponents of any of them." - from 'The MAGA Movement Is Not a Debating Society, ' NYT column by Jamelle Bouie, September 20, 2025.

Edited to add link (NYT paywall):

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/opinion/maga-trump-debate-kirk.html