Donald Trump is prepared to send troops into Chicago, and there is a much more insidious reason for it than he's letting on.

And I've got four interviews this week. I speak with Governor Westmore about redrawing his state's maps.

Tommy Vitor about Republicans' disastrous town halls, attorney Norm Eisen about Trump's latest loss in court,

and Zach Walls about his run for Senate in Iowa. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. The latest pronouncement from Trump is that he's preparing to send troops in

Chicago. And there are two reasons for this. Both of them are nefarious, but one that is truly

cause for alarm. The first reason, pretty clear on his face. Trump is an autocrat, and autocrats want

centralized power and control. By putting his boots on the ground in the cities, he can effectively co-opt power that would otherwise belong to the states. Anyone on the right who claims to be a constitutionalist while Donald Trump tramples on the 10th Amendment is like showing their entire ass right now. But then again, I know it's not exactly breaking news that Republicans are hypocrites. Now, he may very well do what he did in L.A., which was to send the troops in, knowing that doing so would incite violence. It did, and he used that as a pretext to be able to retroactively justify his decision. Like, the guy's not looking to quell any violence. He is expressly looking to exacerbate it. But the second reason here is more worrisome.

And if you follow my content, you know this is something that I've been relentless about calling

out. This isn't only about exercising power now. It's about laying the foundation to be able to do it

during the election. Remember, Trump already tried to seize voting machines in Georgia.

He already tried to block certification of the election in Congress. He already incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. But he didn't have the tools in place to be able to succeed. Like, for as horrific as he was, Bill Barr called Donald Trump's stolen election claims bullshit. And of course, he had nobody in the States willing to carry out his plans. But we're in a different world now. Pam Bondi won't stop Trump from acting on his bogus stolen election claims. Neither will Dan Bongino or Cash Patel or Stephen Miller. And now, if he's got boots on the ground because he's deployed these troops to the states under false pretenses and he asked them to seize the voting machines, what's going to stop them? And of course, the answer to that question may come to us soon. Gavin Newsom is suing Trump in court in California over his troop deployment. He did try to get an injunction when the troops were first deployed, and the courts didn't do that. But their refusal to offer an injunction back then doesn't offer any insight into how they're going to rule on the merits of this case. So it could truly go either way. But the point is that if Trump loses, then other states now have

a legal framework to be able to challenge his troop deployment across the country. And by the way,

if Trump appeals his loss and loses again in the appeals court, then that becomes legal precedent

where other states could point to that and that's even worse for Trump.

And of course, on the flip side, Trump could win, which would establish a framework for him to be able to justify his deployments elsewhere.

So it's all very much in the air right now, but the point is that we have to defeat these efforts.

We have to make noise about these efforts because they represent something fundamentally dangerous,

not just to the people in these

cities whose lives are being upended by these troops, but to our general autonomy.

Like it used to be a right-wing position that the people have to be protected from tyranny,

now they're the ones perpetuating it.

One note of hope here, when we fight these battles, we generally find that the law is on our

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