What Will Be Donald Trump’s Gulf of Tonkin?

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Aside from the garden-variety conservative havoc that Donald Trump will wreak, the biggest danger of his presidency is that he’ll someday encounter his very own Gulf of Tonkin. LBJ used the 1964 attack in the Gulf of Tonkin as a pretext to go all-in on the Vietnam War, and Trump could very easily find a similar sort of pretext to amp up his own authority in dangerous ways. But what is it likely to be?

That is an interesting point. And no, it hadn’t occurred to me before. Iyad el-Baghdadi walks through some of the likely consequences of an attack on a Trump-branded property here, but I don’t think he goes far enough. Something like this could be Trump’s Gulf of Tonkin. And now that it’s been pointed out, it seems almost painfully obvious that a terrorist attack like this is bound to happen.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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