File this one under “Seems like there’s a metaphor here somewhere…” A locomotive engineer in California tried to smash his train (a land-based vehicle) into the US Navy hospital ship Mercy (a water-based vehicle). Los Angeles is not sending their best conspiracy theorists when it comes to the coronavirus response.

Apparently, the conductor believed that Literal Hitler Trump was about to impose martial law on Los Angeles and the hospital ship was just a clever Trojan horse ruse. The good news is that the train didn’t make it out into the water and the doctors, nurses and patients on board are all safe.

Witnesses say the conductor, Eduardo Moreno, was holding a road flare up in one hand like a torch as he sent the locomotive speeding down the tracks. Sounds like he expected to go out in a kamikaze-style blaze of glory, envisioning a giant fireball as he struck a blow for freedom against President Trump. Alas, Eduardo’s personal disco inferno was not meant to be.

The train went off the end of the tracks, smashed through several barriers and then skidded to a halt about 250 yards short of the USNS Mercy. A tiny bit of fuel spilled from the locomotive onto the concrete, so the always environmentally conscious California will probably spend about $840 billion on the hazmat cleanup.

The train terrorist has been taken into federal custody on the rare charge of locomotive derailing. As usual, another Democrat’s attempt to “get Trump” has resulted in a train wreck.

Much like Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion witch hunt, the Ukraine impeachment fiasco, and other harebrained attempts to thwart the American president, this one fizzled out far short of the target.

The Mercy docked at the Port of Los Angeles on March 27, offering its 1,000 beds for patients who are not diagnosed with coronavirus. This is yet another smart, outside-the-box policy to come from Trump’s virus response team. Ill patients can receive treatment in a secure location while minimizing the risk that they’ll catch the Chinese virus and die from it because they’re already sick.

The Port of Los Angeles has space reserved for the US Navy, as a huge number of ports on the East and West Coasts do. During Fleet Week in LA, it’s not unusual to see large numbers of guided missile destroyers and other naval vessels there. Why Eduardo Moreno decided that the obvious hospital ship Mercy – a pretty white ship with red crosses on it – was part of Trump’s martial law scheme is a mystery to normal people.

Then again, anyone who thinks that President Donald Trump is going to invoke martial law against the American people is a mystery to me. Trump? Martial law? Really?!

The guy who is pulling troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq right now? The guy who got US troops out of the hot zone in Syria? The guy who refused to launch cruise missile strikes against Iran after they provoked us in so many ways a few months ago? The guy who wants to talk to Kim Jong Un to bring about the end of the Korean War after 70 years?

Anyone who believes that Donald Trump will impose martial law simply hasn’t been paying attention to the man for the past four years. If you’re really concerned about martial law, look to some of the dingbat Democrat governors to try it with the National Guard. But under President Trump, it ain’t happening.

One thing you simply have to admire about Trump is that he has learned from the mistakes of past presidents. He’s not going to allow a Waco, TX or a Hurricane Katrina response happen on his watch.

Even the military agrees with him. Last September, the Naval War College ran a pandemic response war game in Newport, Rhode Island. They brought in 50 of the top experts in response coordination, containment and other aspects of dealing with a pandemic. One of the major conclusions they came to during the exercise was that a martial law quarantine would only make a pandemic situation worse.

Full quarantines of a city, like China attempted to do in Wuhan in January, don’t work because too many sick people will escape the quarantine and spread the virus to new locations. Sound familiar? An estimated 5 million people escaped Wuhan to parts unknown when China imposed martial law on the city.

The odds of Trump imposing martial law in America are about as good as… well, as taking out a navy hospital ship with a train.