What did Donald Trump do today?

He doubled down on his strategy of sending paramilitary forces into airports.

Trump has refused to allow Republicans to pass any funding bills for the Department of Homeland Security, resulting in a partial shutdown of the government that has had tens of thousands of federal workers going without pay for over a month now. In part this is because he is threatening a legally meaningless presidential filibuster over an act to restrict Americans' ability to vote, and in part it's because he's demanding another massive budget increase for ICE. Trump has increasingly turned to using ICE as a sort of private army, and has most recently deployed them to airports, where the realities of more than a month without pay is forcing TSA agents to quit or call out en masse. 

Trump claims that ICE agents are "helping" in airports that now routinely see multi-hour security screening lines. This is a lie, as millions of travelers have seen with their own eyes this week. ICE agents cannot operate screening equipment, are not trained for passenger screening, are not allowed into secure areas of airports, and can't even give better directions around an airport than the average tourist. They cannot even act as law enforcement officers for the kind of police work that is usually needed at airports.

As a result, the overwhelming job that ICE agents have been doing while what remains of the TSA's employees work without pay is standing around.

 

  

As humiliations mount for Trump, domestically and abroad, ICE is increasingly taking on the role of an emotional safe space for him. Yesterday, he posted a bizarre fantasy about how beloved ICE agents were, and how "they just happen to have much larger, and harder, muscles than most." In reality, ICE is now incredibly unpopular with Americans. As for muscles, the agency had to drastically lower its fitness requirements to meet Trump's hiring surge, to the point where one veteran officer called the standard "pathetic."

Today, Trump mused about doubling down on this strategy by deploying National Guard forces to airports for, as he put it, "more help" than the no help ICE is currently providing. Recently, Trump called up National Guard units from around the country to "fight crime" in cities he was trying to make a political target of. They ended up doing landscaping instead.

 

Why does this matter?

• People standing around doing nothing is about as inefficient as government ever gets. 

• A president who'd ever had to work for anything might not be so casual about demanding Americans work for free. 

• Every dictator tries to give himself shock troops that are only accountable to him.