Brad Unfiltered: Troops in Portland: A Symbol of Authoritarianism

Brad Onishi: All right, y'all, welcome to our live stream for today. I'm here to talk about a bunch of things that I think are really important. The first thing is, we've got troops headed to Portland. We've got Pete Hegseth calling a meeting of all the generals, and four-stars and three-stars and others. And we've got some Christian nationalists who think that Charlie Kirk's murder is really kind of the end of liberalism and progressivism in the United States.

And so, I want to jump into those things and tell you how they're all related. One of the things that I think we need to conclude from today is just the fact that we're getting closer and closer to seeing that the midterm elections next year are not going to be normal. They're going to be anything but what they're supposed to be. And so, we will see how all this crystallizes together here in one second. So, thanks for joining me. Really appreciate y'all. Excited to jump in, so let's go.

All right, so you all know this already, but Trump has declared that he's sending troops to Portland. He says he's authorized Pete Hegseth to use "full force" to do it.

Now, I just happened to be in Portland this past weekend, and I was there with a few friends. Saw a comedy show, hung out, and just like you know already—and I don't think I need to tell any of you this—but Portland is far from a war-ravaged place. Portland is one of those American cities that is both a real city, with a somewhat small skyline but nonetheless some big tall buildings, and is quaint, is cozy, and is just weird in the best ways. My social media feed has been full of people showing pictures of tree-lined streets, of a place where fall leaves are starting to hit the ground, a place where cozy cafés and hip bars and really nice walkways are seemingly what's on offer.

We all know that Portland, though, represents something different for Trump, for the American Right. Portland, especially after 2020, became a symbol. It became a symbol of dissidence, it became a symbol of rebellion, and it became the place where—if you asked anyone on the American Right who listened to right-leaning media—they would tell you Portland is a hellhole. Portland is chaos. Portland is nothing but riots and communists and anarchists, and it is burning to the ground. And it has stayed that in the imagination of "MAGA world" and so on since then.

Portland is sort of the epitome of everything that America is not supposed to be when it comes to cities. In one sense, it doesn't represent crime or blight, perhaps like Baltimore or what they're trying to tell you Washington D.C. is like. But it does represent politics, progressiveness, queerness, alternative culture, non-Christian culture that is the opposite of what is supposed to be in this country.

Now, Trump is doing this, and you know, he's already done it. He's sent troops to California, he's sent troops to D.C.. The reality, though, is that this is not a politically winning thing for him.

[Clip featuring Harry Enten from CNN discussing polling data:] This is fact-check time. You know the idea, "Oh, we're going to be hawkish on crime, we're going to be hawkish on immigration, it's good for us." But in fact, not necessarily. What are we talking about here? All right, Trump deploying National Guards to cities in the United States of America. Look at this, just 42% of Americans support that idea of sending troops into cities like Portland. What about the opposition? Look at this, it's the lion's share. 58% oppose, and we're talking about 64% of independents who are opposed. So if Donald Trump thinks that potentially sending in the National Guard in a city like Portland is a winning political issue, the polling says, "Uh-uh, you are wrong, Mr. President."

The most analogous situation is what happened in Los Angeles, correct? What happened to the numbers there after the President did that then?

Yeah, we've heard this music before, right? We've heard this song before. And what happened the last time that Trump sent National Guards into a western city? Well, take a look at the change in Trump's net approval. Overall, it dropped four points. How about on immigration, which of course those protests were about? Look at that, it dropped by seven points. So we have history of Donald Trump sending the National Guard into a western city, and what happened was there were clear political ramifications for the President of the United States, and they were not good ramifications. What happened was his overall approval rating dropped by four points, and his immigration approval, which had been his best issue up to that point, dropped by seven points, went from net positive territory to net negative territory. In this case, he says he's doing it to protect ICE facilities, which brings us to the issue of ICE in general. What are opinions on this incident?

Yeah, so let's take a look at ICE approval. All right, ICE's net popularity rating. You know, in Trump's first term, it was at zero points. Not too great, but not too bad either. But take a look now. Look at this. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that agency, look at that, minus 14 points. Down it goes because of their actions during the second Trump term. In fact, the Pew Research Center polled 16 different agencies, ICE's net popularity rating was 15th out of 16th. It was close to being the least popular among them all. This bottom line is, John, the President may think this is a politically winning issue for him, but the numbers tell a very different story. It's in fact a political loser.

Now, I'm not going to lie, I don't like that 42%. That doesn't like make me think, "Oh, I can go to bed tonight feeling great". 42% there just feels bad. That should be 10%. That should be 5%. It's not.

Nonetheless, if we were in a frame where your goal was to do things that made you popular so you could win the midterms in 2026, maintain control of Congress so you could push through your policies—à la Bill Clinton, à la Barack Obama, à la whoever—if this were presidencies over the last 75 years, you would be thinking, "What's going on here? This doesn't make sense". But that's not the case, and we're going to get there in a minute.

Now, the other thing that I want to talk about is Hegseth inviting all of the generals—"inviting" is the wrong word—demanding that all the generals, the two- and three- and four-stars, meet this week in Quantico. This is an unprecedented meeting. There's a great Substack by Tim Snyder, The Public Intellectual, this week, and Tim Snyder—and like 10 of you sent this to me and I had already seen it—and it's really good. So let me read a little bit from Tim Snyder on this:

My historian colleagues might correct me, but I do not think, excuse me, I do not think anyone, at least in recent history, has done what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is about to do: put all of the American generals and admirals from around the world into a single room next week in Virginia, just to say something to them. There is no practical reason to do this. He has easier and more secure ways to communicate with the commanders. And there are obvious risks. The entire armed forces of the United States, spread around the world, will be without its leaders. Given that the government could well shut down the next day, the separation of commanders from their command might be indefinite.

He also says: And if Hegseth has his way, these generals and admirals will be one in the same. He announces this in advance, which means that the entirety of the American command will be more vulnerable physically than in command in any conceivable military scenario, including nuclear war. There is no scenario other than this one in which they would all be in the same place at the same time.

So, we have a situation where Pete Hegseth is gathering everyone in the same place. And it is distressing, to say the least, and something that I think a lot of people will find kind of confusing: Why is he doing this?

One of the reasons that that's happening, I think, is that he wants to give everybody the standard "warrior ethos" speech that he's been giving all over the place, and reports are that he's going to be doing it. So we now know that somebody's leaked that he is going to be doing what I just talked about.

But Tim Snyder lays out a couple more reasons that Pete Hegseth might do this. So let's go through what he's saying here:

• He has something trivial to say. That's number one, and I think that's true. And he's going to say that trivial thing. He's going to give his like, what he thinks is a very mind-blowing motivational speech about the warrior ethos.
• He wishes to endanger the lives of the generals and admirals. Now, I don't think that's true. I don't think he's actively doing this to put them in danger, but who knows.
• He will stage a purge, perhaps involving a loyalty oath or something similar that requires personal presence. Now, this one is interesting. There's historical precedent with this. Hitler did something similar, and there is reason to kind of fear this. Donald Trump, we just learned today, will actually be joining. And so there's a concern here that off the record, in ways that we won't see on cameras or recordings, there will be a demand for loyalty. Maybe this will be on camera, who knows. But that is something that I think is worrying a lot of people. That your loyalty is to us and not to anyone else. And we'll see what happens there.
• He will tell the commanders that henceforth their assignment will be to oppress American citizens. It'll be about homeland defense.

The last one really sticks out to me. The assignment to oppress American citizens.

We've got troops in Portland for no reason. There are protests outside of ICE facilities in Portland, but they are nowhere near the level of needing troops. The mayor, the representatives, senators, they're all saying, "We don't need this". They're all saying, "If you ask Oregonians and Portlanders what they want and what would help, it would not be troops". Troops are not the thing that's going to make us safer. Troops are not the thing that's going to change this city in ways that we might think it needs.

But the assignment to oppress American citizens. We already have troops in D.C. and California. Now we're going to get troops in Portland and probably in Memphis. But here's the thing: We already know that Hegseth has his eyes on domestic operations. Here is Politico from about a month ago, September 5th:

Pentagon officials are proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military's years-long mandate to focus on the threat from China. A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.

That report is basically saying, "Hey, China, we're not going to step up to them. They're not our concern". And "Putin, yeah, Trump seems to feel like he got burned by the guy he thought was his bestie, but we're not, we're not taking on Putin really. The focus is not there".

The focus is on us. The focus is on us. It's on the homeland. It's on the domestic. It's on American citizens.

And if you just take everything as a whole here—the troops, the invasions, what they're doing with ICE, Chicago, and so on—here's the goal: It's to wage war on an enemy. They're going to wage war on an enemy. Pete Hegseth has people, he has groups, who he considers the enemy, and so does Donald Trump. The enemy is the American public.

And I know that sounds broad, it sounds general, it sounds extreme, and you're like, "That you need more nuance here. Come on, aren't you supposed to be a scholar? You have a Ph.D., you write books. Come on, man, like let's let's be a little bit more detailed here".

The goal is to wage war on the enemy, and the enemy is the American public. That might seem ludicrous to you, but I think we all need to accept something. We have what they want.

If you think about Donald Trump, if you think about the small circle of oligarchs around him, if you think about the people who have power in this country in relationship to Donald Trump, they want what you have. They're not going to fight Putin or Xi. The war is with you, because you have the money, the property, and the power that they believe is theirs. Let me say that again: You have the money, the property, and the power that they believe is theirs.

And you may be thinking, "Well, I don't own a lot of property or any, and I don't have much money, and, you know, blah, blah, blah".

When you have a regime like the Trump regime, they see citizens as enemies because citizens are citizens. They're people with a voice. They're people with power. They're people with the ability to dissent. They're also people with money. If you have money and you're not sending it up the chain—like in a mafia situation—if you have money and you're not sending it up to Trump, via like Mark Zuckerberg saying he's going to invest $600 billion, but, you know, what and and Jeff Bezos and and all the tech lords who've gotten on board with Trump, all the tech oligarchs, just like the Russian oligarchs—all the people who said, "Okay, I'll kick up 10% to the mob boss so he leaves me alone", "I'll kick up 20% to the mob boss. I'm in Teal. I'm now owned literally by the U.S. government".

"We'll kick up money up the stream", and as long as you do that, you're fine. If you don't, you have things they want.

They want to make sure your vote won't matter like it should going forward. Let me say that again, because I want you to get that point. They're working to make sure your vote won't matter in 2026 and in 2028 like it should.

Now, you may vote. Don't get me wrong, like you may vote. But they want to make sure it doesn't count like it should. Now, we've already seen that. They're going to redistrict Texas, done. They're going to redistrict other states. California says, "We're going to do it too now". So they're basically saying, "You might vote, but we've organized the board such that we already know that your vote won't make a difference" or organizing 10 votes or 100 votes or 1,000 votes or 10,000 or 100,000 votes won't matter. We've gained the system here. Sorry. It's really hard to get out of our little maze. We want to make sure your vote doesn't matter like it should.

And there's evidence of this. There's already evidence of redistricting. There's evidence of Trump saying, "We're going to nothing but mail-in ballots". But there's another piece of evidence here, and I want to play that for you now, and I think it's something worth paying attention to. This is Cleta Mitchell, the famous election lawyer for Trump, who is, in the eyes of many of us, disgraced, but she's still around and she's still doing her thing.

[Clip featuring Cleta Mitchell discussing emergency powers for elections:] But look, I mean, the President's authority is limited. The Chief Executive is limited in his role with regard to elections. Except that where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States, as I think that we can establish with the porous system that we have, then I think maybe the President is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward.

Yeah, that is the issue here. I mean, we all know that the Constitution says that the time, place, and manner of elections is something that is left to the states, not to the federal government. But as you brought up, there are national security reasons why we need to make sure our elections are protected and not corrupt in one way or the other.

Did you all hear what she just said? "Exercise emergency powers to protect the elections going forward".

So, we need troops in Portland because Portland's so terrible, and that's what you're going to hear on Fox News. That's what you're going to hear on Newsmax. That's what you're going to hear on Tucker Carlson. That's what you're going to hear all over Instagram and TikTok and everywhere else. It's been that way for a long time. "I'm glad they're doing it".

And let's just go back to what we learned about like whether or not this is popular. 42% say, "Let's do it". So that's four out of 10. That's not two out of 10. It's not one out of 10. It's four out of 10.

So what happens when Trump says, "Look, it's so bad that we had to send troops. It's also so bad that I'm just not sure we can vote like we're supposed to"? Or, "I'm going to do things that will just make it hard for your vote to count like it should"?

Since Charlie Kirk died, there's been a growing chorus among Christian nationalists that this event, as tragic as it is, may be the thing that destroys leftism and progressivism in the United States for good. And none other than Doug Wilson has been talking about this:

[Clip featuring Doug Wilson discussing a political strategy of war and pursuit:] I believe that history will show that Tyler Robertson, if he is convicted of firing the shot that killed Charlie Kirk, will also be revealed as the man who put a bullet in the neck of progressive leftism. But only if, one of the most important principles of war is pursuit. In electoral politics, pursuit means that any Republican legislature that has the opportunity to redraw their congressional districts has a moral obligation to do so, and to do so before the midterms. Be like Texas. This should all be done according to Hoyle and no dirty work. Of course not. The adversary will say that I'm urging legislators to go out there in order to "mander the Jerry", but I laugh this suggestion to scorn. More likely, any manifestation of spine by Republicans on this issue will result in a significant number of Gerrys getting themselves "un-mandered," and about time too. This should be part of a strategy to have the midterms be the time when a strong angel from Revelation pours out the contents of the seventh vial over the top of the Democratic Party as it is currently constituted, resulting in it being reconstituted as something else. Something resembling a quivering gelatinous mass, and then after the seagulls take it away, a wet spot on the pavement. In short, the goal for the midterms should not simply be to retain the house, too obvious and hardly ambitious enough. The goal should be more than to put the recapture of the House by the Democrats out of reach during Vance's two terms, also too obvious. Rather, the goal should be to have all the discussion among TV's talking heads after the midterms to revolve around whether the Democrats can survive as an organized political party at all. And the consensus should be something like, "No, they can't."

I wrote a book. Some of you in the chat have said about this, have noticed. I wrote a book called Preparing for War, and I was like, "Hey, they're preparing for war". And I had people asking me, like, when I gave book talks and stuff, like, "Hey, man, why the like super aggressive title? You know, I got kind of turned off by that. I don't want to read about that kind of thing, or, and I don't want to prepare for war. I'm not that kind of person. I don't like war". And I was like, "I don't like war either. Sounds terrible. I'm not the one preparing for war, they are". And they have been for 75 years. And Doug Wilson just says it here, right? He just distills it into one minute. "This is war". "We need to put a bullet in the neck of progressivism".

The enemy is all those people around the American table with a voice who are not them. When they look around them, the American table, they're like, "No, no, this American table is, ooh, this is set all wrong. None of these people should be sitting here". So if you over there authoritarian are trying to get rid of them, "Yep, we're we're with you". They see you, right, in the public square, living in a way that is not their way, as the enemy.

Now, what this has led to—and I think this is a good place to kind of go today and kind of finish up—is a piece by John Myer at Slate from last week. He says, "Look, you're comparing Trump to the wrong dictator". A lot of people want to talk about Hitler. People want to talk about Mussolini, people want to talk about whoever. But he really points to Francisco Franco. And Franco, you know, is this mid-20th-century fascist leader, if you want, if you don't want to use the word fascism you can say autocratic leader, etc.

But Franco reigns for four decades. And he does so by way of two mechanisms. One is getting conservative and big business interests on his side. And when he was able to do that, he was able to consolidate power because those interests had so much sway over land, over resources, over media. Doesn't that sound familiar?

He did something else, though, that was really important. He tied the Catholic Church to his government. John Myer says at Slate:

Framing his rebellion as a holy crusade against godless socialists, Franco strengthened the church's role in Spanish life by funding church reconstruction (anti-Christian task force anyone?), reinstating religious education in schools (PragerU anyone?), and giving the clergy authority to censor anything they deemed anti-Catholic (White House Faith Office, anti-Christian bias task force once again). The Catholic hierarchy relished their restored privileges and did little to oppose Franco's secret and not-so-secret oppression and incarceration of his enemies. To some of the faithful, Franco was the lesser of two evils. To others, his dictatorship was ethically righteous, God's imperfect vessel to preserve the power of the church.

Franco made it so that you could not practice any religion in public other than Catholicism. He made it such that if you tried to practice a religion that was not Catholic, you were an enemy of the state. The Catholic memorials and icons, the Catholic statues, they dominated Spanish public life at this point. And to be Catholic was to be a good Spaniard.

And so the Catholics, as Myer says here, many of them at least, loved this because he destroyed all difference, all plurality, all diversity, all dissidence.

And I think that we have to take into consideration the fact that the Christian nationalists since Kirk's murder are now basically saying, "There's only one way forward". And if you don't get on with us, you're going to be, um, you're not going to be considered a Christian. You might be on that enemy's list. The way forward is war. The way forward is violence.

So, if I just back up today, I think, "Look, we've got troops in Portland, we've got Hegseth gathering the admirals and the generals. We've got people saying in the Department of War that the focus is on the homeland".

• My takeaway is you're the enemy.
• My second takeaway is the Christian nationalists also see you as the enemy. So they're on board with this war. They're framing it differently. Doug Wilson doesn't talk like Donald Trump, but they both are fighting the same enemy in their mind, and that's why Trump remains their guy. That's why they remain on board with what's happening. They love Pete Hegseth. They love J.D. Vance. They love RFK. They love everything that happened at Kirk's memorial. And that could be, as we look back, a kind of deciding event in all of this, but time will tell.

We'll see what happens in Portland. We'll see what happens in Chicago. We'll see what happens in Memphis. We will see what happens as they start to crack down on left-wing organizations. The goal is to wage war on us so that they can extract from us everything that they don't have yet: all the property, all the power, all the money.

I appreciate you joining me. We'll catch you next time. Don't give up.