LYNCH MOBSTER:

In the week leading up to his announcement of a "surge" of hundreds of FBI, Justice Department, and Homeland Security personnel to Chicago, Donald Trump wanted a bigger, more public, more violent fight on the streets of the Windy City.  [...]

The president said he wanted something similar to what his administration has done in Portland, an ongoing melee between protesters and rioters and unmarked federal authorities. Trump has been closely monitoring the conflict--largely on his favorite channel, Fox News--and trumpeting it as a sign of his own supposed strength. [...]

"There was rarely a time I spoke to him about violent crime when two things didn't come up: Number One, that it's all happening in Democrat-run cities, with Chicago being shorthand for that kind of [blight]," said one former senior Trump administration official. "And Number Two, if it were up to him, we would return to the old days where it was eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth--or we would forget about proportionality altogether. He would talk about lining up drug dealers and gang members in front of a firing squad... If it were solely up to him, that is how the country would solve crime in Democrat-run cities [such as Chicago and Detroit]."

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