What did Donald Trump do today?

He said that the First Amendment doesn't apply on his birthday.

As of Tuesday evening, Trump had deployed about 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines against Americans protesting ICE tactics in Los Angeles. The protests themselves have been small, confined to a small section of downtown Los Angeles. 

Trump himself has appeared very confused about what is actually happening, and not just because he's been spreading lies about the situation on the ground. Two days ago he congratulated the National Guard for quashing the protests before the Guard had actually been deployed. And today he said that he'd spoken with California Governor Gavin Newsom yesterday, which came as a surprise to Newsom.

 

Neither Trump nor his staff have been willing to comment about why he remembered a conversation that never happened about ordering troops into an American city.

There is a larger context that is important here. The general consensus is that Trump (or whoever is using his authority) is trying to provoke a confrontation in order to have an excuse to put military pressure against his political enemies, like Newsom—or simply against Americans who resist him. Trump is already talking about expanding the deployment of troops against citizens in other American cities, in spite of the fact that there is no unrest for the military to suppress.

This Sunday, Trump's birthday, is—not coincidentally—the date he has demanded for a Soviet-style military parade, with tanks and artillery pieces rolling down the streets of the nation's capital. Nationwide protests are planned on that day for cities and towns all across the nation, but by design, not in Washington D.C. As the organizers of the No Kings movement explained:

In Oval Office comments today, Trump ignored the lack of organized protest plans and declared that anyone who did protest his birthday military parade would "be met with very heavy force."

In reality, it is not illegal to demonstrate against the government of the United States, and it is not lawful to use the military or law enforcement to suppress Americans' First Amendment rights.
 

Why does this matter?

• The American people are not the enemy of the American state, no matter how the president feels about them. 

•  Presidents who can't remember the details of sending the military to pick fights with protestors (or who lie about it) aren't fit for office. 

• This is what a "protest" that could have benefited from a National Guard callup looks like: