By 6 AM on Sunday, Trump was up and doing what he enjoys most-- raging at his political enemies on Twitter, screaming about cracking down on "agitators and thugs" (for him a synonym for protesters, people of color and Democrats) and fanning the flames of civil unrest. In all, he entertained his followers with nearly 100 tweets and retweets about his great poll numbers-- from a GOP firm that allows their clients to practically pick their own results-- and both defending violent right-wing terrorists and savaging Democratic politicians trying to cope with the Trump-inspired chaos in their cities and states. His armed supporters drove into Portland to do one thing: wreak havoc on Trump's behalf-- a real caravan this time.I believe someone may have since talked Trump out of going to Kenosha (still not sure), but on State of the Union yesterday Karen Bass (D-CA) explained that Trump’s trip there was "to agitate things and to make things worse... He is campaigning. It is clear his campaign is all about law and order. It is a throwback to the past. And he's going to do everything to disrupt law and order in this time period."The NY Times' Peter Baker wrote the story everyone else is quoting: Trump Embraces Fringe Theories On Protests And The Coronavirus, although "embraces" is such a Times kind of description for what Trump is actually up to. Baker noted that President Sociopath was claiming on Sunday morning that the "street protests are actually an organized coup d’état against him."One of the Trumpists was killed in Portland precisely what the country's chief agent provocateur was hoping for. In his weekend diarrhea of hate messaging to his Twitter followers, Trump "embraced a call to imprison Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, threatened to send federal forces against demonstrators outside the White House, attacked CNN and NPR, embraced a supporter charged with murder, mocked his challenger, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and repeatedly assailed the mayor of Portland, even posting the mayor’s office telephone number so that supporters could call demanding his resignation."
One of the most incendiary messages was a retweet of a program from the One America News Network, a pro-Trump channel that advances extreme theories and that the president has turned to when he feels that Fox News has not been supportive enough. The message he retweeted Saturday night promoted a segment accusing demonstrators of secretly plotting Mr. Trump’s downfall.“According to the mainstream media, the riots & extreme violence are completely unorganized,” the tweet said. “However, it appears this coup attempt is led by a well funded network of anarchists trying to take down the President.” Accompanying it was an image of a promo for a segment titled: “America Under Siege: The Attempt to Overthrow President Trump.”Mr. Trump likewise reposted messages asserting that the real death toll from the coronavirus is only around 9,000-- not 182,000-- because the others who died also had other health issues and most were of an advanced age.“So get this straight-- based on the recommendation of doctors Fauci and Birx the US shut down the entire economy based on 9,000 American deaths to the China coronavirus,” said the summary of a story by the hard-line conservative website Gateway Pundit that was retweeted by the president, denigrating his own health advisers, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. Deborah L. Birx.
Over the weekend (Saturday + Sunday), there were 1,325 new COVID-deaths reported. The actual U.S. death total is 187,224, despite the denialism from Trumpist conspiracy theorists encouraged by Trump himself. The half dozen states with the most new deaths this past weekend:• Florida 163• Texas 188• Georgia 133• California 102• Alabama 55• South Carolina 54Maybe Trump wants to tell their families that they didn't die of COVID and that's it's all a hoax and all about him. It is likely that by election day, something like a quarter million Americans will have been majority of American voters agree that Trump is an unreliable source of information about the pandemic and that, in general, he is untrustworthy and untruthful. Poor thing... must be frustrating for him.
But Mr. Trump also retweeted a message calling for Mr. Cuomo to be locked up because of the high death toll from the coronavirus in New York nursing homes earlier in the pandemic. “#KillerCuomo should be in jail,” said the message by the actor James Woods, a strong supporter of the president’s.And the president even “liked” a tweet that offered support for Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Trump supporter who has been charged with homicide after two demonstrators were shot to death in Kenosha, Wis. “Kyle Rittenhouse is a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump,” the tweet said.Mr. Cuomo responded on his own Twitter feed a few hours later, pointing to the Trump administration’s failure to contain the pandemic. “The White House has learned nothing from COVID,” Mr. Cuomo wrote. “National threats require national leadership. It’s been 6 months without a national strategy on testing or mask mandate. Only the federal government has the power to go to war with COVID. They are failing and the nation suffers.”For his part, Mr. Biden issued a statement condemning the violence in Portland as “unacceptable” regardless of one’s political views and criticizing Mr. Trump for trying to raise the temperature rather than lower it.“What does President Trump think will happen when he continues to insist on fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters?” Mr. Biden asked. “He is recklessly encouraging violence. He may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong-- but his failure to call on his supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he is.”...Trump repeatedly assailed Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland for resisting federal help and delighted in showcasing a peaceful protest held at the mayor’s own home on Friday, even retweeting a post accusing the Mr. Wheeler of “committing war crimes.” Rather than calling for calm, Mr. Trump seemed to justify aggressive action against demonstrators by his supporters.“The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected after 95 days of watching and incompetent Mayor admit that he has no idea what he is doing,” Mr. Trump wrote, as he retweeted a journalist’s post reporting that Trump supporters were firing paintballs and pepper spray, including at the reporter. “The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer. The Mayor is a FOOL. Bring in the National Guard!”Mr. Trump plans to travel on Tuesday to Kenosha, where emotions have been raw since the police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back seven times, leaving him paralyzed. The president’s trip has caused concern that he could inflame the situation. He made no comment on the shooting for days until he was asked about it on Friday in an interview with WMUR of New Hampshire during a visit to the state.“It was not a good sight,” he said. “I didn’t like the sight of it, certainly. I think most people would agree with that. But we’ll be getting reports in very soon, and we’ll report back.”His Twitter comments on Kenosha, however, have focused on restoring order in the streets. The president’s string of Twitter messages trailed off on Sunday morning before he got into his motorcade and headed to his golf club in Virginia, where he was greeted by a handful of protesters, including one dressed as a grim reaper holding a sign that said “183K,” referring to the number of people in the United States who have died from the coronavirus.
Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian told NPR that Trump shouldn't come to his city tomorrow. "Realistically, from our perspective, our preference would have been for him not to be coming at this point in time... All presidents are always welcome and campaign issues are always going on. But it would have been, I think, better had he waited to have for another time to come... Peaceful protests are not a problem. Our biggest problem really did come from people coming from outside the area and causing a great deal of damage and destruction."Meanwhile Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes was more explicit. He told John King on Inside Politics that "You look at the incendiary remarks that the President has made, they centered an entire convention around creating more animosity and creating more division around what is going on in Kenosha. So, I don't know how given any of the previous statements that the President made that he intends to come here to be helpful. And we absolutely don't need that right now." Josh Paul is Wisconsin's Attorney General. He made some good points yesterday about why Trump should not show up in Kenosha tomorrow. He end his Twitter stream by reminding people that "While Donald Trump has spoken about law and order, he has pardoned his allies, flouted the law, and spewed hate and division, day after day, from our highest office. He is a catalyst for chaos and a threat to the rule of law."
