Trump's test run

Hartmann Report -  Steve Bannon, an enthusiastic advocate of authoritarianism, dropped the mask this week. On his War Room podcast, while interviewing far-right lawyer Mike Davis, Bannon said plainly what the Trump administration has been dancing and weaving around for months:

“We can use this as a test run, as a test case, to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.”

There it is. Not a conspiracy theory. And definitely not liberal hand-wringing. The man himself, in his own words, explaining exactly what’s going on at airports across the country right now.

I’ve been writing and talking about authoritarian playbooks for decades, including in my book The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class, and they almost always follow the same predictable script.

First, you exploit (Reichstag Fire, 9/11) or manufacture (“Border invasion,” Iran attack) a crisis. Use that to change the laws to give yourself more power as you flood public spaces with your militarized enforcers under the cover of “helping.”

Then you normalize it. Have you noticed how stories about ICE brutalizing and killing people have gone from the front pages to occasional mentions on social media?

Then you expand it. ICE has gone national, massive databases of protesters are being organized, and Trump this weekend came right out and said that his next target will be Democrats, who he called America’s “greatest enemy,” using the “Democrat Party” slur that Joe McCarthy suggested Republicans should always use:

“Now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the Radical Left, Highly Incompetent, Democrat Party!”

Hitler didn’t march his stormtroopers into polling places on day one. He put them on street corners first, just like Trump is doing. By the time Germans understood what was happening, the intimidation and threats of violence or imprisonment were already baked into daily life, and questioning what was happening felt like questioning the natural order of things.