Joseph Sabino Mistick: Conspiracy theories come to life under Trump

If you thought that those conspiracy theorists were nuts when they ranted about black helicopters and secret paramilitary troops taking over our towns and rounding up Americans without probable cause, you better think again.

The so-called militia members who have warned us about this usually imagine an international conspiracy, some one-world plot to strip us of our American freedoms. If they can pin it on the Democrats and the liberals, all the better.

Their greatest fear is that a secret government military force will be used to deny us our freedoms. That’s exactly what it looked like in Portland, Ore., last week. Under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security, federal agents in military-style camouflage, with no name tags or badge numbers, scooped citizens off city streets and spirited them away in unmarked vehicles.

And it was engineered by the only American president who seems to have bonded with the conspiracy theorists. Donald Trump reminds us daily that he shares their distrust of government, and he has promoted some big conspiracy theories of his own. But, in Portland, Trump looked like the kind of guy the conspiracy theorists have warned us about.

Federal agents have long worked well with municipal police. They are members of joint task forces in many cities, helping to combat crimes that are covered by federal and state jurisdiction. There have been times when local or state officials have requested federal assistance and have been grateful to get it. And there are some federal crimes that are exclusively federal.

There is a right way to do this, but what happened in Portland was not the right way, nor was it intended to serve a real policing purpose. Trump told us what this was really about when he spoke about Portland and the other cities where he intends to deploy federal agents. He called them “Democrat run cities,” not even trying to hide that this is all about politics.

It’s the same blame game that Trump tried with the coronavirus. In early May, he opposed federal aid for states that needed help “because all the states that need help — they’re run by Democrats in every case.” And now, with death rates soaring in Florida, Texas and Arizona — all Republican states — we see how that turned out.

Trump is desperately trying to make this presidential race about something other than his failure to provide effective national leadership on the pandemic. He whipped up fear when he ran in 2016, and he is trying it again. It is a constant theme of his campaign ads and public statements, and targeting our cities and trying to sound like a tough guy is more of that.

Tom Ridge deserves the last word here. A Vietnam veteran, he was the first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, created after 9/11. Ridge, a Republican who served successfully as our governor, told Sirius XM host Michael Smerconish, “The department was established to protect America from the ever-present threat of global terrorism. It was not established to be the president’s personal militia.

“It would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to a unilateral, uninvited intervention into one of my cities.”