Federal agents detain a man on Aug. 25, 2025, after he left an immigration court hearing at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York City.

Donald Trump, who four years ago instigated an attack on the U.S. Capitol, now vows to bring law and order to the city he and his followers terrorized four years ago.

The gaslighting is almost too absurd for words.

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And no, I don’t use the word “terrorized” lightly. What Trump and his army of thugs did fit the very definition of terrorism — violence intended to coerce government action, in that case to intimidate Congress into overturning a free and fair democratic election.

But there is more to what we’re witnessing now in Washington than the reeking irony of an insurrectionist claiming to be the savior of the very city he menaced in his naked bid to subvert democracy and hold onto power.

This is part of a clear pattern: to push America ever deeper into an authoritarian police state, with Donald Trump as its leader and protector.

Protector from what? All sorts of trumped-up dangers that he says need quick, extreme — and in too many cases, unconstitutional — heavy-handed “solutions.”

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Trump is like the knight who gets an accomplice to put a maiden in distress and then wants to be rewarded for rescuing her. Or the arsonist firefighter who torches a building and then wants to be lauded as a hero for being the first to arrive on the scene.

So Trump declares emergency after emergency — 10 of them so far since taking office, as The New York Times recently

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