The Speech of the Psychopath - Trump, Chicago, New York and the March of the National Guard

These are sentences that sound like they come straight from the script of an authoritarian nightmare. Donald Trump, baseball cap pulled low over his face, conjures in a speech the images of Chicago and New York - cities he wants to "clean up" with the help of the National Guard. The subtitle transcripts of the speech read like a paranoid monologue: "Chicago is a mess." - "They have an incompetent mayor." - "Next we might solve that." - "New York, we are helping." - "The radical left." It is a linguistic mosaic of aggression, self-mystification and conspiracy thinking. In his sentences, Trump sketches a backdrop in which cities are degraded into enemy territory, citizens into adversaries, and political institutions into obstacles. "They wear red hats, just like these," he says, while staging African American women in the audience as proof of his popularity. "Thank God he came," he puts in the mouths of others. "Half of the people were robbed." And finally: "They work for stupid people." These are not political arguments - it is the linguistic image of a man who imagines himself as the savior in a world besieged by enemies. The Speech of the Psychopath

The legal situation, however, is anything but clear. Washington, D.C. as a federal district is directly under the president - that is why Trump was able to send about 2,000 National Guardsmen into the streets here. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has now even allowed them to carry weapons - even if it remains unclear whether they are really allowed to use them. In Los Angeles, however, the situation was more complicated: Trump "federalized" the California National Guard in order to deploy it past the governor and state law. Exactly this deployment is currently the subject of several lawsuits, as it could violate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which strictly restricts the use of the military domestically. For Chicago and New York the following applies: Without the consent of the governors - J.B. Pritzker in Illinois and Kathy Hochul in New York - a deployment of the National Guard is hardly legally tenable.

But Trump is unimpressed. "We are ready to do that. We have to do that," he declares. And he adds: "After we have done this, we go somewhere else and we will get it done." It is the logic of a "rolling cleanup," a political campaign that step by step transforms cities into occupation zones. Legal subtleties do not interest him - it is about power, staging and the image of a strong man who lives on applause. The comparison with a psychopath imposes itself, not as an insult, but as an analytical category. Psychopathic speech is recognized by the dehumanization of the others, by the reinterpretation of violence as "help," by the staging of enemies who appear weak and almighty at the same time. Whoever speaks like this does not want to govern, but to dominate. And whoever acts like this tests the limits of a democracy - in Washington, in Los Angeles, perhaps soon in Chicago or New York.

Legal framework of domestic military deployment

The deployment of soldiers on American soil touches one of the most sensitive lines of the Constitution. Three laws and structures are central to this:

Posse Comitatus Act (1878) - It is considered a bulwark against the abuse of military power at home. The law prohibits the army and air force from being used for ordinary police tasks. It is meant to ensure that the armed forces do not become the tool of a president against his own people.

Insurrection Act (1807) - This exception opens the door. In cases of insurrections, massive unrest or when federal law must be enforced, the president may deploy regular armed forces. But the law is vaguely formulated and gives the president wide discretion - a gray area that repeatedly gives rise to debate.

The National Guard - The National Guard occupies a special role. It normally reports to the governors of the states, but it can be "federalized" by the president. In the District of Columbia there is no governor - which means: here the president acts directly. That Donald Trump is now systematically using this loophole is not just a symbol, but power politics at its core.

Legal fault lines - The current situation shows how fragile the boundaries between civil security and military force are. While in the states the hurdles are high, Washington as the federal capital lies legally more openly in the hands of the president. This is exactly where Trump is reaching in - a lesson in the mechanics of power behind the façade of headlines. Weapons in Washington

Weapons in Washington

The new order from the Pentagon marks a watershed that goes far beyond a sober administrative act. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has authorized the National Guardsmen in Washington to carry their weapons - a step that dangerously blurs the fragile line between military presence and armed show of force. It remains open whether the soldiers will actually patrol the streets with rifles or only store their weapons in vehicles, but the mere possibility changes the atmosphere of the capital. A general now decides whether the troops march visibly armed through the city, flanked by coordination with police and federal authorities. Officially it is emphasized that the soldiers are hardly to be drawn into direct policing, especially since many have neither experience in dealing with civilians nor training in de-escalating police work. But the symbolic effect is already enormous: Washington becomes the stage of an experiment in which the boundaries between protection and intimidation, between security and occupation, merge at frightening speed.

The anatomy of creeping civil war

What Trump is doing is no longer politics - it is the systematic division of the nation. He creates two Americas: One, his America, white, armed, paranoid. The other, the America of the "radical left," of the cities, of diversity - declared the enemy, made the target. The governors of Illinois and New York are facing a historic decision: If they bow to the military threat from Washington, they legitimize the coup from above. If they resist, they risk open confrontation between federal troops and state authorities. It is the constellation of 1861, when the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter.

The momentum of escalation

The "rolling cleanup" Trump fantasizes about - "after we have done this, we go somewhere else" - follows its own, unstoppable logic. Each city that is "liberated" normalizes the deployment for the next. Each act of resistance becomes proof of the necessity of tougher measures. It is the spiral that leads from a state of emergency into dictatorship. The 2,000 National Guardsmen in Washington are only the beginning. Once they carry their weapons openly, once the first clashes with demonstrators occur, once the first blood flows - who then still guarantees that the show of force will not turn into the real thing?

The point of no return

America stands at a crossroads not seen since the Civil War. Trump is not only laying the groundwork for a civil war - he is already waging it, only without open combat. It is a cold civil war of institutions, of narratives, of realities. The question is not whether Trump risks a civil war. The question is whether American democracy is strong enough to defend itself against this frontal attack without itself taking up arms. For that is Trump’s perfidious calculation: He provokes resistance only to then be able to suppress it as an uprising.

What is happening in Washington is more than a political crisis. It is the attempt to rewrite the DNA of the American republic - from a democracy to a military dictatorship, from a state of law to a Führer state. The National Guard in the streets of the capital is not just a symbol. It is the vanguard of a new, dark order. History will ask us: Where were you when democracy died? The answer lies in our present: We were witnesses. The only question is whether we were also resistance.

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