The world is watching in disbelief as the President of the United States goes full Aryan. After coaxing black and brown voters into his tent, Trump loaded a gun, trained it at their heads, and blocked the exits.
Trump’s racism surprises exactly no one, but his unprecedented aggression in arresting black members of Congress and sending brown migrants to prison without legal process hints at real strategy from an administration otherwise known for incompetence.
Political writers often quip that Trump’s racial animus is performative: red meat thrown to a carnivorous base, a little candy to keep MAGA extremists standing back and standing by. Plus, daily outrage keeps media focus where Trump wants it: on him.
But Trump is not just feeding and entertaining his base, he’s simultaneously trying to goad democrats — racial minorities in particular — into violence. He’s deliberately trying to incite race riots in the streets, complete with looting and mayhem, as a predicate to martial law.
America for me, Sudan for thee: the race-based immigration pivot
In late March, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem put on full makeup and a push-up bra to pose as a jailer at a human zoo in El Salvador. She stood in front of brown human props caged in forever cells “stuffed to the rafters” even though the vast majority of them have never been convicted of a crime.
Trump wants to boot 20 million brown and black immigrants out of the country with no thought of the resulting labor shortage he’s creating for farmers, construction, and health care providers. He asked dictator Bukele to build additional gulags for that purpose, and, in the meantime, has begun sending migrants to South Sudan, a country where they have no ties. On May 21, another judge found that Trump violated another federal court order by deporting brown migrants, without legal process, to a country so dangerous the State Department warns people not to set foot there.
Against this backdrop of staged cruelty toward migrants and refugees of color, Trump crafted a deliberate race-based contrast, by welcoming a “small subset” of other immigrants: white Afrikaners. Embracing the same racist minority that led South Africa's brutal apartheid regime — to whom Elon Musk has family ties — Trump is institutionalizing racial preference while also endorsing the racist violence of apartheid.
Ambushing South Africa’s president with a fake social media video
If welcoming white Afrikaners wasn’t enough to punctuate the memo, last week Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, where Trump showed a social media video distorted to support claims of an ongoing “genocide” against white farmers in Ramaphosa’s country. After both presidents were seated, Trump dimmed the lights to show dramatic footage of a row of crosses, claiming, “These are the — these are burial sites right here … Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there's approximately a thousand of them. They're all white farmers, the family of white farmers. … Those people are all killed.”
Trump’s bogus video was instantly and widely refuted. Those crosses weren’t grave markers of murdered white farmers; they were placed along the road as part of a political protest over the apparent murder of two farmers at their home, not a thousand, back in 2020.
Trump knows that 45% of the country will never hear that refutation, as Fox News praised the meeting and video, amplifying Trump’s false claims of white genocide to gin up racial hatred among white MAGA supporters.
Trump is inciting divisive racial violence as a segue to martial law
Trump is also flexing unconstitutional muscle to intimidate black officials. Two weeks ago, ICE agents arrested Newark’s black Mayor Ras Baraka while he and members of Congress were visiting an ICE detention center. When that case was ignominiously dismissed, Trump officials pivoted to and arrested Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), also black, also touring the facility.
Backing up the camera from the micro to see the macro, Trump’s persistent DEI attacks against corporations and universities, his well-choreographed abuse of brown migrants, and his very public attempts to intimidate black elected officials by arresting them supports a sinister theory: that Trump wants to trigger racial violence to give him cover to declare martial law before the midterms.
Trump’s carousel of abuse is a sinister ploy to elicit help from the very minorities he seeks to oppress. He is poking us to explode in violent outrage so that he can declare martial law before the midterms, sic the military on US citizens, and “protect America” from yet another disaster he purposely created.
Americans should heed MLK’s words and engage in non-violent, righteous resistance instead. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, show up on June 14 and show the world your disgust at America’s would-be king. You, me, and millions of Americans can stop him, and it starts by showing up.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
