The locking of criminals in tiny cells on an island is the perfect metaphor for Trump's second term

Cnn
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The reopening of Alcatraz is such a typical -trunk idea that it is a miracle that the president has not yet tried to do it.

The murderous currents, which were surrounded by swirling currents, would snap the desire for Macho spectacle in tiny cells on an island.

Years after his closure in 1963, the prison became a pop culture icon with a tradition, which was made by infamous stories by Gangster inmates such as Al Capone and films with desperados and rough justice – long fascination by the president. It is the notorious inheritance perfect for the ruthless pictures that the White House weaves because it pursues hardline plans for criminal justice and mass shift.

The recommendation of the rock would strengthen Trump's own strong, strong aura in the self-proclaimed strong man and make him look mercilessly the goal of the policy of the White House. While liberals are probably horrified by the idea, the Trump supporters who react to his dystopian theater could be with their minds and consider them common sense as a new home for the worst of the worst.

The President does not disguise Alcatraz's attraction as an allegory for his leadership and calls the island on Sunday “a sad symbol, but it is a symbol of law and order”. On Monday, he remembered reporters in the White House that the former prison once held “the most violent criminals in the world”.

Of course, the revival of Alcatraz before San Francisco as a federal prison is deeply impractical and could waste millions of dollars when Elon Musk imposed the funding of the federal government. It would be a big task to bring it to modern standards – not necessarily for the occupants, but only for the guarantee of prison officers who would have to work there. And the administration's cavalizing approach to its deportations and the rule of law accuses serious red flags about the type of adequate process potential.

But Trump's administration has never been a good government.

If the president's goal is to detain the worst kind of perpetrators, he could, for example, choose the federal Supermax prison in Colorado-an isolated, spartan facility that the shoe bomber Richard Reid Reid, the World Trade Center Ramzi Yousef and Oklahoma City Co-Cityspirator Terry Nichols will never leave. But prisoners are sent to Supermax to disappear from public awareness – that is part of the punishment, together with their several lifelong prison terms.

Trump has already tried to send migrants to Guantanamo Bay without papers. He eyed a separate facility at the base in Cuba as the one that contains the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But the dark connotations of the name were the point.

The reopening of Alcatraz would be the ultimate iteration of this strategy and creates a lively symbol for the choreographed strength of the president and his ridicule about political correctness.

And even if administrative delays, legal challenges and other obstacles mean Trump for years Never get The prison was reopened, he already has the heading.

The plan would have another advantage for Trump. Alcatraz 2.0 would shape the psyche of one of the most liberal cities in the nation in which a nemesis of the president is home – the spokesman for House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. The California legislator dismissed Trump's latest gasps with the contempt that she reserves for her former opponent. “Alcatraz closed as a federal prison more than sixty years ago. It is now a very popular national park and a great tourist attraction. The president's proposal is not a serious one,” wrote Pelosi about X.

But could a president who admires dictators to choose a better metaphor for his second administration than to transform a tourist hotspot into a bleak gulag that revives the hard-clinic justice of a less enlightened age?

Trump's presidencies often seem to develop as a result of television stunts and unusual concepts. During his first term, the idea was that the term of office of the former “apprentice” star was an extended reality show, to an overturned cliché.

Late in this first mandate, many of Trump's glasses were increasingly worrying – like his march in Washington Lafayette Square when it was only violently released by demonstrators. One of the high-ranking areas was the then chairman of the joint chief of staff General Mark Milley, who later apologized to take part in a politicized photo surgery and to make an enemy of the president.

Trump's rally on the Ellipse in Washington On January 6, 2021, the stage for one of the darkest moments in American history -put the attack on the US Capitol by his mob by Maga supporters.

During the second term, the political choreography of the administration deliberately beat authoritarian overtones. The president said over the weekend when I asked Kristen Welker from NBC if he had to maintain the constitution. And Trump plans to hold a military parade to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the army on his own birthday – an event that is probably reminiscent of the margin of rockets and tanks loved by former Soviet leaders.

The president's wild plans often seem to be distracted. His idea of ​​reopening Alcatraz could have been agreed to draw these comments on NBC, or to try to make people forget that after repeated impending breakthroughs, he still has not produced a single promised trade agreement after the economy has been repeatedly predicted from its random warning wars. There is a good reason for Trump to change the topic: the lack of content discussions with China, which is currently raised by a tariff of 145% of a president recorded by Beijing's retaliation, soon threatens to cause a great crisis.

At other times, Trump simply seems to be motivated by a love of the spotlight. Its taste for pomp was saturated by his state visit to see the late Queen Elizabeth II in his first term. King Charles III. Has invited him to a repetition.

And Trump's summit with withdrawn North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un, whom he had previously mocked as “Little Rocket”, are among the most breathtaking diplomatic occasions in recent decades. At a meeting, the president joined the Hermit -Königreich and created a piece of history in itself. The photo ops were incredible and are painted in the world. But the summit meetings did not make any significant long-term breakthroughs to suspend the rocket and nuclear programs of the north. Nevertheless, Trump could argue that no other modern president was more lucky to pursue traditional diplomacy, commitment or punishments for North Korea.

At other times, Trump's theater style fell back or offended. For example, when he was standing in front of the wall of the CIA stars and reminded fallen officers and praised the size of his first inaugural amount in 2017. On another occasion, Trump transformed a scout jamboree into a self-supporting political rally.

But Trump's flair for the theater also helped him change extreme circumstances in political gold. The search photo in a Georgia prison after one of his criminal charges would have ended another politician's career. Trump used it as a launch pad for the most impressive political comeback in American history. And after cheating on death by a potential assassin, he had the presence of the mind to get up, to clench his fist and to create one of the most indelible images in the history of the republic.

This moment matched the common thread, which went through the political performance art of the President, which has an irresistible attraction of its basis, but reminds the critics of a democracy. Regardless of whether he signed instructions on the stage after his second inauguration, posing as a conqueror in the White House after he had returned from the hospital after the survival of Covid-19 or sends migrants undocumented to El Salvador in bonds, posing as a modern Caesar, who brings a ruthless power with it.

This way of thinking solved his command for the office of prisons for the reopening of Alcatraz.