Trump Sends Military After Protesters in Authoritarian Move | Pivot

I think this is one piece of the chess board to what is a civil war. I think this is another step to America breaking up.

That's the plot of Hunger Games, just so you know. (instrumental music) Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Scott, we've got a lot to get to today, including the Trump-Elon breakup getting uglier, uh, plus another breakup making headlines. Warner Brothers Discovery is splitting up, just like we said. Um, but let's get to the first thing because what's, what's happening, uh, there's lots of interesting... I wanna talk about your boxing match and etc., etc. But first, uh, let's talk about what's happening on the ground in California. Governor, uh, Gavin Newsom says California will sue the Trump administration, challenging the president's recent order to federalize National Guard forces amid protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids. Newsom already asked the White House to rescind its deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to LA, accusing Trump of manufacturing chaos and violence. Trump made the order over the weekend, invoking a rarely used federal law. Uh, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, uh, created more of a problem when he also got in the mix by suggesting active-duty Marines could be sent in. Newsom called these comments "deranged behavior." I think it's a shitshow that Trump is creating on purpose, as many people do, um, and that he's creating attention in order to pick a fight. Essentially, this is what he's trying to do so they can, uh... and creating immigration actions that are, uh, things that would cause a f- would cause people to protest and then trying to egg them on into worse, uh, activities. So let's talk a little bit more about that. I've called, um, this complete overreach by a desperate despot. Uh, your thoughts?

Well, I've been called hysterical for, uh, you know, a while now comparing or drawing similarities between America right now and '30s Germany. And you don't have to be Hitler to borrow methods and worst practices from his playbook, and that is wh- when tanks roll through cities, it doesn't feel like strength. It feels like a funeral for civil society. Germany is n- Germany in the '30s didn't collapse overnight. It slid into tyranny by normalizing soldiers where citizens used to stand. Uh, you know, early Nazi propaganda decided, and we're doing the same thing, we have real problems overseas. You know, there are still Russian... (laughs) You know, Russia is still invading Europe. Chi- There's real significant issues around China, Pakistan and India, could, um, could eventually digress to a, a nuclear conflict. Uh, Iran is trying to spin up reactors. But if you look at... A- a- and again, I think, (sighs) I just... this has so many echoes of '30s Germany. Early Nazi propaganda emphasized that Germany's problems were due to internal saboteurs: communists, Jews, immigrants. And then today if you look at this rhetoric, they're blaming immigrants, academics, protesters, journalists. It, it mirrors kind of the same playbook here. And when you have a government who turns its military force inward against journalists, migrants or citizens who believe in exercising their right to protest in a civil peaceful manner in justice, you're not defending democracy. You're rehearsing for something much darker. So it's, it's not the protests themselves. It's not what's going... This is another step towards normalizing, uh, an attempt to rebrand, um, militarization as patriotism. And-