There we were, last Thursday, focusing on Team Trump’s tragic immigration protest killings and those other inhumanities committed in the ICEland of Minnesota.

We thought we were watching the decline and fall of President Donald Trump at his worst. But what we didn’t know (and couldn’t imagine in our wildest conjuring) was that Trump was also making some very different news that day, 1,000 miles south of Minneapolis. Down in Atlanta’s Fulton County, Trump had set in motion something that, while maybe not his worst, was quite troubling. It was an act of political vengeance that history may judge as one of the most compulsive and destructive acts of Trump’s two presidencies.

Because, if Trump continues giving in to his worst impulses, what he has just begun could end up smearing (but hopefully not shattering) the world’s greatest democracy that has been America’s gift to global governance.

Trump’s politically locked and loaded Kash Patel version of FBI agents – armed with a convenient judge’s warrant and accompanied by Trump’s Director of Intelligence (and conspiracy theory believer) Tulsi Gabbard – were seizing all of Georgia’s 2020 election ballots. Plus all other evidence their bosses wanted.

This is potentially horrible because we know what Trump wanted. He still wants to fulfill that vendetta he began back on Jan. 2, 2021, when he made that pathetically panicky phone call to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Remember?

“All I want to do is this,” Trump said. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have…” Trump was desperately pressuring his fellow Republican to somehow give him enough votes to be reelected – and prevent Joe Biden from being inaugurated. Never mind that even Trump’s Attorney General William Barr told Trump he’d lost that election.

So here’s where we are now: Trump and his team finally have all those ballots – and they can do with them whatever Raffensperger refused to do. How will we ever know if Trump’s acolytes change or destroy anything? Is Trump preparing to claim he won the election he lost?

Meanwhile, up in Minnesota, Trump seems to have finally figured out that his presidency has been sabotaged from within – done in by the acts, failures and myopic incompetence of the insiders he trusted most. When Trump’s immigration agents shot and killed protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti, videos show they weren’t threatening the life of the agents.

Trump has taken care of both of his problems in the only way he knows. He has taken possession of the 2020 evidence that is all the Georgia election ballots. And he has taken possession of all the 2026 evidence of the crime scenes where Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by Trump’s confrontational and quick-triggered immigration troops.

Trump seems to have just realized that it was the incompetence of his trusted insiders that caused him to lose the support of voters who once viewed immigration enforcement as his greatest accomplishment.

So take a new hard look at his failed insiders: Trump let White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller dictate all sorts of enforcement moves that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem compliantly implemented. Consider Miller’s disastrous quotas.

Last May, Miller imposed quotas demanding that agents arrest 3,000 immigrants a day – a tripling of their totals. But Trump officials had pledged to arrest and deport the “worst of the worst” – illegal immigrants who committed the worst crimes. But Miller’s quotas meant agents had to go way beyond the time-consuming locating and arresting of the worst. To meet their quotas, agents began mass racial profiling, nabbing all who looked, say, Latino – even if they’d committed no crimes. No wonder Trump’s immigration sweeps were condemned.

Miller also imposed a quota of hiring 10,000 new immigration agents by the end of January 2026. Rushing to make that number meant lowering standards, reducing training – which led to inhumane abuses.

Meanwhile when Good and Pretti were killed, officials including Miller, Noem, and CBP commander Greg Bovino raced to control the news by wrongly defaming the victims as “terrorists” before seeing the evidence. When Miller heard Pretti had a gun, he publicly called him an “assassin.” But Pretti was licensed to carry the gun – and never even reached for his gun. He was disarmed when an agent grabbed the holstered gun – and was unarmed when he was shot – 10 times.

One other fed – Trump – also blamed Pretti coming to a protest with a loaded gun. Too bad our 47 th president didn’t consult with our 45th president on that.

On January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump was backstage at the Ellipse, before his infamous speech when he urged his crowd to march to the Capitol and prevent Congress from certifying the vote totals showing his election defeat. Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson later testified to Congress that a Secret Service official told Trump protesters were staying outside the magnetometers because they had weapons.

“I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons,” Trump replied, according to Hutchinson. “They’re not here to hurt me…. Take the f-ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here…”

And lo, they did. Last year, Trump pardoned those Jan. 6 protesters who had guns when they were arrested. Today, they are walking around freely.

Sadly, Trump can’t grant the same privilege to Alex Pretti.

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