Trump Blurts Out Real Reason for Insurrection Act Threat--and It's Dark [View all]

[Miles Archer]

Trump Blurts Out Real Reason for Insurrection Act Threat—and It’s Dark

Greg Sargent/
January 21, 2026
RICH FANTASY LIFE

He thinks it lets him abuse his power however he wants. It’s up to the courts—and the American people—to show him otherwise.

https://newrepublic.com/article/205504/trump-insurrection-act-threat-courts

Do President Trump’s advisers actively want him to act like a dictator? At the very least, there’s plainly a deep split inside Trumpworld on this question. As deranged as it seems, one faction clearly believes Trump absolutely should project unconstrained tyrannical power, to frighten ordinary voters and institutions into compliance, while another faction thinks acting like a Mad King risks a huge electoral rebuke and, by extension, that normal political patterns still apply.

You can see this tension in Trump’s ugly new comments about invoking the Insurrection Act, which would empower him to use the military for domestic law enforcement. Lately he’s suggested that he might not invoke it after all. And in an interview flagged by Aaron Rupar, Trump said this again.

Asked if he sees the act as “necessary,” Trump said: “I don’t think it is yet. It might be at some point.” Trump added that other presidents have invoked it, and said: “It does make life a lot easier. You don’t go through the court system. It’s just a much easier thing to do.”

Emphasis added. Trump seems to think invoking the Insurrection Act means he’s no longer constrained by the courts. That’s nonsense. Yes, the act would allow him to deploy the military to carry out things that “law enforcement” (a grotesque misnomer for ICE) is doing in places like Minneapolis amid his immigration crackdown. And given that Trump has already sanctioned extraordinary abuses of power—detentions of U.S. citizens, warrantless arrests, excessive violence against protesters, including the occasional killing—empowering the military to do all this is an unsettling prospect.