Trump Loves Calling People "Terrorists." We're Starting to See How That Ends.

"The Trump administration doesn't merely flout international law; it treats the very idea of a rules-based legal order as a weakness to be mocked, violated, and destroyed. Overseas, that contempt takes the form of unrestrained military force that threatens to unravel the post-World War II international system that the United States itself built. At home, the same impulse can be seen in a growing willingness to discard legal limits on state violence, recasting unlawful force as strength and accountability as effeminacy."

"It's always a trap when you sense an 'Own the Libs' play. It's difficult to avoid jumping in to rebuke the outrageous act without feeling as if you've been baited into fulfilling the narrative that the administration has set up. That's what played out here: The Trump administration goes into Venezuela, arrests Nicolás Maduro, Democrats are mad. The administration and all of these right-wing commentators turn around and say that it proves that Democrats are weak and that international law is fake."

The Trump administration treats the rules-based international legal order as a weakness to be mocked, violated, and destroyed. Abroad, that contempt manifests as unrestrained military force that threatens to unravel the post-World War II international system that the United States built. At home, legal limits on state violence are increasingly discarded, recasting unlawful force as strength and accountability as effeminacy. Performative machismo is replacing law as a governing principle, making rule-breaking the objective rather than an exception. Right-wing rhetoric and actions amplify and normalize the denigration of international law as weak or 'fake.'

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