If Trump really believes ‘the enemy within’ populates our cities, we should all be terrified

There is no singular moment that aptly illustrates the racist underpinnings of the Trump administration. Rather, the bigotry lives in the cumulative effect of its words, its writings, and its actions.

From the executive order enabling federal contractors to engage in discrimination, to the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, to the federal firings that helped to spark over 300,000 Black women losing their jobs, this administration has worked to reverse racial progress on multiple fronts.

The administration launched a successful effort to legalize the racial profiling of Latinos, and in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s unfortunate shooting death, Donald Trump and his followers portrayed Kirk as a martyr, in spite of his many racist and homophobic statements.

However, rhetoric is not enough for Trump and his allies. They want to go further. That much was clear when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned more than 800 military commanders for a speech in which he called for America’s “warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.”

Taken alone, Hegseth’s statement might be troubling. Combined with Trump’s later statements to the group about the “enemy from within,” and Trump’s musings about American cities being used as “training grounds” for the military, it is terrifying.

Clearly, Trump is comfortable using the military against his fellow Americans. He has already dispatched National Guard troops to largely Black cities like Washington and Memphis under the guise of fighting crime, and to progressive cities like Portland, Ore., to quell anti-government protests.

But if Trump believes the so-called enemy within populates our cities, and that those enemies should be intimidated, demoralized, hunted, and killed, we should all be concerned.

Trump has used racism to stir up America’s underlying feelings of resentment and fear. He has convinced his followers that only their group is deserving of the American dream. He has exploited their anxieties about that dream being snatched away, and after feeding them a steady stream of misinformation, he has found they are willing to lose certain freedoms, so long as they believe others will lose even more.

That dynamic explains why Trump’s followers are cheering him on in last week’s government shutdown — a conflict that’s centered on the fight over affordable healthcare.

Trump has convinced his followers that only their group is deserving of the American dream.

Democrats are fighting to maintain tax credits that help 22 million Americans buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Conservative leaders are pressuring Trump to allow those tax credits to expire. Meanwhile, Trump is threatening to fire even more federal workers during the shutdown. His followers think that’s good.

Trump’s movement is, in many ways, an appeal to the most selfish aspects of human nature, and it’s based on a simple strategy: Tell people what they already want to believe — that someone different and frightening is taking their stuff, and someone must fight to take it back.

That simple act of deception has convinced tens of millions of Trump-supporting Americans to hand over their speech to censorship, hand over their democracy to pseudo-dictatorship, and hand over their cities to the military.

In spite of it all, I believe there’s hope, and it may reside within the ranks of the very military Trump and Hegseth are seeking to weaponize against the American people.

The military, you see, is a place where it’s impossible to hide. You either do the hard work to advance, or you don’t. And in such an institution — which, like so many others, is dominated by white men — women and people of color must work twice as hard to advance.

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Yet, Hegseth, in his speech to military commanders, said, “We’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons: based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts.”

It was an insult to the men and women in uniform, but more than that, it was a lie. In an organization like the military, where each person’s life is dependent on the competence of their comrades, I know those commanders recognized Hegseth’s statement for what it was.

The question now is this: Will our military give in to the racism that drives Trump’s movement, or will it fight for the equality the Constitution promises to us all?