….but think of President Trump as the Martin Luther King of health care,” Lord argued. “When I was a kid, President Kennedy didn’t want to introduce the civil rights bill because he said it wasn’t popular, he didn’t have the votes for it, etc. Dr. King kept putting people in the streets in harm’s way to put the pressure on so that the bill would be introduced.”

Lord is not predicting that “random overprivileged white guys in MAGA hats will engage in civil disobedience” to fight healthcare. Rather, Lord suggests that Trump is a great leader who pushes for reform at the risk of getting people hurt like MLK did.

The difference is that MLK inspired people to volunteer to march even at great personal risk. Trump is threatening to hurt people who have not volunteered by messing up their health coverage. Like United Airlines, Trump is volunteering unwilling victims. That is not how any of this works. The verb volunteer is not transitive. You cannot volunteer others.

We cannot let ourselves be tricked by this verbal slight of hand. MLK’s volunteers and Trump’s victims are not analogous just because in both cases people get hurt.