Deborah Berke, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, said the White House barricaded as if it were a military base, with multiple layers of black fencing surrounding the limestone Georgian structure, conveys the opposite message and represents a physical violation of democracy.

“I think the need to fortify your house — and it’s not his house; it’s our house — shows weakness,” she said. “The president of the United States should not feel threatened by his or her own citizens.”

Of course, in Trump’s mind “his citizens” are only the people who vote for him. Everyone else is an alien.

Trump likes to talk about being “tough.” He praised the despotic Kim Jong Un for being “tough.” He likes to brag about how he has the “tough people” on his side. He clearly thinks to be “tough” — to be brutal, to dominate, to run roughshod over everything in your way — is a positive attribute. People who are not tough are “weak.”

Clearly, Trump sees toughness as strength. Some dictionary definitions agree. But is it?

Trump’s form of toughness has more to do with being armored against the outside world. It’s about having a big defensive layer between himself and anything that threatens him. That says nothing about personal fortitude. Fortitude, personal strength, comes from internal qualities and does not depend on how many bodyguards you have.

Eric Lutz at Vanity Fair wrote of the Bible Stunt:

Hard to imagine any other [president] having the guts to walk out of the White House like this,” former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker tweeted. And yet, having protesters cleared out beforehand is hardly an act of courage. Barack Obama met with protesters in the Oval Office in 2014 following the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson. Even Richard Nixon, who at times encouraged violence against Vietnam War demonstrators, went to the Lincoln Memorial for a surprise visit with protesters in the fever that followed the killings of Kent State students by Ohio National Guardsmen. Trump? He talked tough in the Rose Garden, walked down a street that had been emptied just for him with tear-gas and rubber bullets and heavily-armored police, and posed for pictures. As Anderson Cooper put it Monday evening: “He was hiding in a bunker, and he is embarrassed that people know that, so what does he have to do? He has to sic police on peaceful protesters, so he can make a big show of being, you know, the little big man, walking to a closed down church.”

Eric Lutz also writes about the new White House wall:

The new fortification—which a Secret Service source told Fox News is “standard anti-riot fencing and ranges from seven feet to more than nine feet high”—comes amid days of largely peaceful protests outside the White House. On Friday, after some of those demonstrating against systemic racism and police brutality breached temporary fences near the White House, Trump and his family were whisked into a secure bunker—a sore spot for the president, who has spent days now trying to convince everyone that he wasn’t rattled by the episode and that he’s actually super brave. On Monday, he more or less declared war on protesters in the Rose Garden and made a show of walking off the White House grounds to a historic church that had been damaged in the demonstrations. But the tough-guy act was undermined by the fact that he used chemical agents and rubber bullets on peaceful protesters to clear the way for the stunt. Foiled in his initial attempt to save face, he tried a new tack on Wednesday: Claiming, hilariously, that he had actually only gone down to the bunker for an “inspection” of the space.

A strong person wouldn’t be so defensive about being rushed into the bunker.

The word toughness can connote an ability to withstand hardship and adverse conditions. But we all know that ain’t Trump. Trump’s form of “toughness” is external. It’s hiding behind fencing and steel and bullet-proof plexiglass. It’s having a tough outer shell that protects the marshmallow center.

In the last post I documented that a lot of past presidents managed to not be seen assuming a fetal position while huge and hostile protests raged outside. Think also of Abraham Lincoln occupying the White House while the Civil War was being fought in Virginia. The District of Columbia itself was well fortified, but anyone could walk into Lincoln’s White House without being challenged.

But put a few people outside the old fence carrying signs, and Trump is undone.

Related — the Trump campaign is now selling camouflage MAGA hats.

“When you become a member of the Trump Army today, we’ll give you access to our never-before-seen Limited Edition Camo Keep America Great Hat,” the email blurts, bold-face lettering and all.

“The president wants YOU and every member of our exclusive Trump Army to have something to identify yourselves with, and to let everybody know that YOU are the president’s first line of defense when it comes to fighting off the liberal mob.”

Yeah, nothing says “battle ready” better than a stupid cloth hat.

Meanwhile, we’re seeing more signals that the professional military is backing off from Trump.

“There is a thin line between the military’s tolerance for questionable partisan moves over the past three years and the point where these become intolerable for an apolitical military,” said Douglas E. Lute, a retired three-star Army general who coordinated Afghanistan and Pakistan operations on the National Security Council for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and later became the American ambassador to NATO. “Relatively minor episodes have accumulated imperceptibly, but we are now at a point of where real damage is being done.”

I sensed there was a real rupture between the military and Trump back when Trump betrayed the Kurds last fall. Still, the brass doesn’t criticize sitting presidents, as a rule. But he’s pushed them too far. Even Defense Secretary Mark Esper seems to have distanced himself from Trump, at least a little bit.

We’re now getting some signals that the Bible Stunt didn’t help Trump’s approval numbers, and polls also show the public doesn’t approve of Trump’s “tough” handling of the protests.

But Trump can’t change; stunts and bluster are all he knows how to do, so don’t expect him to improve. And don’t expect him to show genuine strength, because he doesn’t know what that is. He’s nothing but a whiny, spoiled child with a lot of bodyguards.

See also The cowardly president hides — again.