Trump Threat to Occupy Cities Takes Ominous Turn in Vile Fox News Hit

In an ugly move, Fox News contacted Republican senators and asked: Should President Trump deploy the National Guard in your states’ blue cities? Fox News got back the answer it was trying to generate: GOP senators actively want Trump to use the military in their states’ urban areas, ostensibly to fight “crime.” This is an unnerving turn in the saga that makes Trump’s threat look worse. Congressional Republicans expressly want Trump to employ troops to intimidate their own constituents—provided it’s confined to largely Democratic areas—and they’re saying this openly, egged on by Fox, making additional occupations more likely. Meanwhile, Democrats are consumed in a big debate over … whether they can talk about this topic at all. We talked to Democratic strategist and media critic Jamison Foser, who has a good piece about all this on his newsletter, Finding Gravity. We discuss why the media is wrongly describing this as a political winner for Trump, what the polls actually say, and how the media storyline is encouraging Democrats’ worst duck-and-cover instincts. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.