This was a troubling and chaotic week for our country. At home, political violence continued to unfold, as a Minnesota man carried out a gruesome assassination of a Democratic state representative and her husband, and injured another Democrat as well, both on his long list of targeted individuals. An act of political violence would normally be a moment for the president to call for calm and a lowering of tensions. Trump, however, did the exact opposite. We are also observing a disturbing, growing trend of Democratic officials being manhandled and arrested in public view by federal immigration agents, and a Department of Homeland Security that only further escalates, rather than apologizing. As the week came to a close, Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) wondered, “Do the members of Congress need security details to defend themselves from the executive branch? God, I hope not.”

Trump finally got his long sought after military parade, but as I wrote here, it was a day of humiliation. His parade drew mere thousands to Washington D.C., and Trump could be seen pouting at the mundanity of it all! Magnifying the failure of his event, on that same day, millions of Americans protested at more than 2,000 demonstrations in 50 states in what was dubbed ‘No Kings’ protests. Trump’s military parade also highlighted dichotomies in his deployment of U.S. military forces: Trump has deployed nearly 7,000 National Guard and Marine troops to Los Angeles, while being reluctant to send troops to battle alongside Israel in one of his long-stated goals of ending Iran’s nuclear program. While the Republican Party had a very public rift over U.S. involvement in the Middle East, Trump appeared indecisive and uncertain, and questions arose about whether his National Security Council, now composed mostly of loyalists, was up to the task.