NBC News: “After reports last week that Trump was considering selling or giving away the red Tesla that he purchased this spring in a show of support for Elon Musk, NBC News’ White House team has been tracking the location of the vehicle.”

“As of this morning, the car was no longer parked outside the West Wing.”

“As is so often the case, Donald Trump’s opponents are playing into his hands. This is exactly the kind of fight that Donald Trump loves, with his opponents carrying Mexican flags past burning cars.”

— Republican pollster Whit Ayres, quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

“The retribution efforts that he is engaged in are clearly deeply animating. He has never been especially intrigued by governance. He is about power. I think you’re seeing that now.”

— Maggie Haberman, quoted by Vanity Fair, on President Trump.

“He’s decided to throw out all the rules. The thing that that has done, as far as I’m concerned, is make him very boring, because it’s like it’s all on the table. We know exactly what he’s doing. We know exactly what his intentions are. He’s blonde Berlusconi. This is, I mean, he’s just trying to do the same thing all the other strongmen and would be dictators do all over the country. I think the really interesting question is, what the country lets him get away with, and we’re seeing a really interesting test of that right now, all over the country, especially this week.”

— Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC.

Stephen Collinson: “Donald Trump is talking and acting like an authoritarian as he escalates a constitutional clash with California over his migration crackdown.”

“Much now depends on whether he’s simply talking tough or if he’s ready to take an already-tense nation across a fateful line in his zeal for strongman rule.”

“In a mind-boggling moment, on Monday, the president of the United States — the country seen as the world’s top steward of democracy for 80 years — endorsed the arrest of the Democratic governor of the nation’s most populous state.”

“The specter of federally controlled troops in American streets has historically signaled a seismic social crisis, from forcing integration in Arkansas to protecting civil rights marchers in Alabama. But President Donald Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles at a time when state and local officials said they had protests there under control,” the Washington Post reports.

“The move reflects an increasingly evident pattern of his presidency: Trump declares an emergency or crisis where many others do not see one, enabling him to take sweeping actions, rally supporters and fight on political terrain he finds favorable.”

The Pentagon significantly escalated the federal response to the immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles on Monday, mobilizing a battalion of 700 Marines and doubling the number of California National Guard troops in what officials described as a limited mission to protect federal property and agents, even as President Trump described the situation as “very well under control,” the New York Times reports.