The irony of Donald Trump pressuring Republicans in the House of Representatives to end a border deal is that many of his voters once counted on him to stop the deep state from hurting America. Since the former president has been out of power, he and his cronies have made that conspiracy theory a reality: an unauthorized network of individuals embedded in and around the government who bend power to their own ends.

During the 2020 general election, Trump called the migrant crisis an invasion.

In December,

he said immigrants were poisoning the blood of our country. Today, he brags about potentially bypassing a bipartisan bill that would, among other things, give Biden and future presidents the authority to close the southern border. The proposed bill would also add 1,300 Border Patrol agents, along with technology to more efficiently detect smuggled fentanyl.

Now Trump, the man who went to Washington to drain the swamp, does not want the bill to become law. Its passage would damage his campaign’s claim that President Biden is neglecting the border, a belief he is counting on for votes in November. And he is not ashamed

That

People know he’s trying to thwart the bill by telling supporters in Las Vegas on Saturday: Please blame me. Please. Putting himself first towards the problems and well-being of the nation.

Again.

Of course, Trump was never the antiseptic he claimed to be. His time in the White House marked a new low for selfish abuses of power, eventually leading to an attempted coup, complete with a draft executive order to seize voting machines. But when he led his party in the worst direction, at least he was an elected official.

Today, Trump is a private citizen.

A private citizen who was found liable for defamation (twice) and assault in less than a year. A private citizen who allowed boxes of classified documents to be embezzled and stacked near a toilet on his Florida estate. A private individual was held liable for fraud because he exaggerated the value of that estate by 2,300%. A private citizen who entered the White House with a decades-long record of ruining and bankrupting companies, left office four years later after increasing the national debt by nearly $8 trillion.

That is the person from whom House Republicans, some of whom were involved in Trump’s attempted coup, receive orders.

That’s the person who doesn’t want his party to do anything about the border unless he’s president.

This is the person House Speaker Mike Johnson (aka MAGA Mike) answers to. That’s why he sent a letter to the Senate saying that the border bill the chamber was still working on would be dead when it arrived in the House of Representatives.

How can the speaker be so sure that a bill that has not yet been written will fail in the House of Representatives? Because the future cause of death has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with the man charged with maximizing the appearance of chaos under Biden.

Last year, another Trump surrogate, Senate candidate Kari Lake of Arizona, accused Biden of letting the migrant crisis destabilize our country. Now she doesn’t want Biden to stop the migrant crisis. It does not serve the national interest. She is entranced by a certain citizen who is running for office and running in and out of the courtroom.

OK, so Trump and his loyalists are showing that their border talk isn’t about the border, it’s just about optics. Hypocrisy is as prevalent in Washington as Dodger Dogs are in Chavez Ravine. But this is not your run-of-the-mill political doublespeak. This is actually a crisis.

From June 2022 to June 2023, Border Patrol stopped more than 200 people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list as they tried to enter the U.S. from Mexico. And the man who wants to be our commander in chief is telling his troops in the House to resign for his own personal gain.

And the speaker has indicated that the troops are prepared to comply. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is moving to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the southern border.

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill ma’am storyline

e

Secretary of The West Wing.

This is more like that Baggage episode from The Handmaids Tale, where we learn what caused the fall of democracy before the dystopian era. We forget how dangerously close imitating that terrifying work of art came on January 6, 2021. The peaceful transfer of power is interrupted by violence. Members of Congress are running for their lives.

You were there all the time, but no one noticed you, the character June said in that episode, as she looked through old newspaper clippings about protests and unscrupulous leaders with large followings.

Democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps, according to the authors of the 2018 book How Democracies Die. For us, the first step toward erosion was taken when the electoral college was created to appease slaves who feared democracy.

Centuries later, another step was Trump’s ascension to the White House: a populist known for not paying his workers, a favorite of evangelicals even though he has a thing for porn stars. A charlatan who doesn’t want Republicans to help Biden stop the invasion that he believes is destroying America.

You know what really puts us in danger? Elected officials doing what private citizens want.

@LZGranderson