Right back at ya! Trump’s crude but effective rhetorical standby | Chris Taylor

The president has spent the past decade employing a familiar tactic. Accusing protesters of insurrection' is just the latest example

Donald Trump and his allies wasted little time in branding the people protesting against immigration enforcement raids in Los Angeles as insurrectionists". Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy - particularly the vindictive kind - spoke darkly of a violent insurrection". JD Vance, the vice-president, inveighed against insurrectionists carrying foreign flags" on the streets of the nation's second-biggest city.

It didn't escape notice that an insurrection was exactly what the president was accused of instigating on 6 January 2021, when the flag being paraded through the Capitol was that of the Confederate secessionists. And that Trump hadn't shown quite the same enthusiasm for sending in the troops then.

Chris Taylor is a subeditor at the Guardian US and author of The Black Carib Wars: Freedom, Survival, and the Making of the Garifuna