Never Cory Booker
The showboat will gladly militarize America
Context:
Thursday, 11/20:
Trump’s National Guard DC deployment is ruled “illegal.”
Six member of Congress released a video telling soldiers not to obey illegal orders. Trump immediately responds by fomenting stochastic terrorism, reposting others’ calls for executions, and calling the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR.”
Wednesday, 11/26:
Two members of the National Guard in DC were shot while standing on a corner a few blocks from the White House. Trump immediately blamed Democrats. Within a few hours it is reported by multiple sources to be Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year old Afghan native who relocated to Bellingham, WA, in 2022.
Lakanwal (who was shot and subdued by other members of the National Guard) was a legit Afghan CIA operative who fled to the U.S. in 2022, and was granted asylum by the immigrant-averse Trump Administration, in April, 2025. At the time Lakanwal was granted asylum, the Administration was still defending its deportations of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia and dozens of others to El Salvador, without Due Process.
Erasures
As of April 1, 2025, we have no record of an American citizen who has been disappeared by the Trump administration, though we can be sure it will happen in the absence of Due Process.
An Afghan who is 29 in 2025 was 6 years old when the U.S. began military actions in his home nation. Still, he sided with the occupiers enough to join their international spy agency and target fellow Afghans.
The Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday [the day following the shootings] that he worked with a CIA-backed military unit during the war in Afghanistan.
“In the wake of the disastrous Biden Withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden Administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the U.S. Government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation,” Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement.
Did anyone else find it odd the Director of the CIA confirmed an operative’s identity, and did so that quickly? Even if he was a former operative, this is unusual. Was this an attempt to get ahead of, and negate, the Deep State conspiracists; or was it an attempt to lead them? Blaming Biden, rather than simple confirmation, indicates it is Trump Administration propaganda released with Trump-centric motivations.
The Trump Administration takes the approach (in most cases) of conducting their conspiracies largely in the open (taking bribes, persecuting political enemies, hiding the Epstein file contents); almost as if they think conspiracy only exists when it is secret.
Immediately following the shooting came predictable MAGA accusations of liberal perpetrators, and the predictable condemnation of violence from Liberals. But this one message stood out among the rest, from New Jersey Senator, and “unannounced” 2028 Democratic Presidential Primary Candidate, Cory Booker:
Senator Cory Booker (31 minutes ago)
I’m horrified by the shooting of our National Guardsmen in Washington D.C. today. Violence against law enforcement is never acceptable and must be condemned. I am holding the victims and their loved ones in my heart tonight.
Booker called soldiers illegally occupying an American city “law enforcement.”
Just a slip of the tongue, perhaps? Some aide, caught up in all the excitement and looking to spin against future accusations that Booker might want to “defund police”? Possible, perhaps likely. Still, it demonstrates a perspective on the legitimacy of state violence, and an ignorance of the prohibition of posse comitatus.
George Romney, in his run for President, had to tread into international politics and made a public statement where he used the term “brainwashed” to describe how he came to an antiwar position.
“‘When I came back from Vietnam, I just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get,’ said Romney on The Lou Gordon Program broadcast that would air on Sept. 4, 1967 on WKBD-TV 50 in Detroit. ‘And since returning from Vietnam, I’ve gone into the history of Vietnam, all the way back into World War II and before. And as a result, I have changed my mind. I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop communist aggression.’”
That ended Romney’s run, presaging the end of Dan Quayle’s political future for misspelling “potato.” We once held politicians to higher linguistic standards. Fall into colloquialism or brain fart into illiteracy, and we don’t see a future for you, in our organization.
We are in a far different place now than we were in 1968, or 1988, or even 2008. And Booker’s (because he is responsible for social media content going out under his political brand—just like Trump) conflation of National Guard troops with “law enforcement” will likely not disqualify him as a candidate. But it should.
He’s saying he does not understand it is never the place of the military to enforce civilian law. The martial law that would be required for National Guard to enforce the law in DC was declared not to exist a week prior. It underlay his Congressional colleagues’ entreaty to soldiers not to follow illegal orders—the largest news story in the days prior to the shootings. Trump threatened Booker’s peers with execution, Warrior Pete Hegseth threatened to Court Martial Booker’s fellow Senator and former Navy pilot, Mark Kelly—and Booker’s statement makes it seem the deployment was legal, that the Guard was there to enforce the law and was not itself in violation of it.
The reason the Guard still occupies the streets of DC is because Trump wants to establish precedent for a President using the militia domestically, and will be appealing all rulings forbidding this to the Supreme Court.
John Roberts likes the idea of a dictatorial Executive, so right now appears to be the best opportunity for the Federalist Society to formalize its theories of government. The Court will take the Trump cases, even though his sloppy and careless authoritarianism has been central to his losses in the lower courts. The Roberts Court amended the Constitution from the bench via their ruling the Executive is immune from criminality when engaged in (unspecified) “Official Duties” for a reason.
The time is coming soon, when the impeachment of Donald Trump will be challenged on the grounds that Presidential Immunity means it is impossible for “high crimes and misdemeanors” to have been committed. To try to get around this, Democrats will file articles of impeachment that focus on Trump’s “unofficial” acts. The case will become one to establish what constitutes an official act, more so than Presidential Immunity itself. This way, the Presidential Immunity precedent will gain greater purchase by having been used as the context in which another ruling was made.
Cory Booker mistaking soldiers for police is a problem, and it’s all wrapped up in the larger problem of how these state incursions on our rights are being framed. Assumptions are being affirmed via silence, with concerns directed instead to the outcomes made possible under those assumptions, which is a dangerous thing.
We are in deep shit trouble because the only way the Democrats have won anything over the past decade is by comparing themselves to Trump. They do not oppose fascism per se, even when it is as plain as armed soldiers on city streets to “enforce the law.”