Every parameter points to a Trump defeat in 2020. However there is a persistent belief (and fear in opposition quarters) that the mendacious Trump is invincible. Incidentally this assessment is not shared by him as evidenced by countless “anonymous” inside reports, the fact that he is doing everything he can to suppress the vote including crippling the Post Office and declaring that he will not necessarily accept the election results.
What justifies the free flowing anxiety is that Trump knows no boundaries and is so desperate that he will, as he has always done, go for broke ignoring the country’s health, racial and economic crises. The rubric under which he will defy all norms and even his illegality is Law and Order. As the election approaches the race tightens exacerbating the fears of his re election. The opposition cannot rid themselves of the irrational delusion that Trump walks on water. Trump who knows the polling numbers are barely budging will throw caution to the winds and will risk bloodshed by exhorting the vigilantes to support him. Up till now Biden has concentrated his message to returning life to normality and reinstating America's soul..
While every fact shows that the threat to Law and Order is predominately from the right wing militia type vigilante movements, a conclusion reached by the Security and Intelligence communities, Trump and Fox News distort reality and claim it is the Democratic inspired Black Lives Matter protestors and the left wing Antifa that are at fault. Add the latter distortion to his message that his was the greatest response to the pandemic the world has ever seen, that the economy has once again reached the highest heights, that only he can stop the violence and suburbia being overrun by blacks that is Trump’s election manifesto.
With his election platform set he proceeded, with William Barr his Attorney general in tow to Kenosha to restore Law and Order.
VOTING HAS NO NUANCES
Voting is a binary choice - you vote for one person or the other. Large sections of the population are one issue voters. On key factors such as the economy, management of the current health care crisis, direction that the country is going, job performance and character. Trump is way behind Biden. In the national polls Trump is over eight points behind. That disparity is even more than the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in 2018 when the Democrats trounced Trump’s GOP. The number of swing states have doubled as evidenced not only by the polls but by the fact that vulnerable Republican Senators weren’t on the speaking list at Trump’s love fest. Trump, Fox, the FaceBook trolls and the GOP have selected to make violence and support of vigilantes, “Make America Safe Again”, the binary issue that voters must decide the election. That issue is fraught with risk to his chances but more importantly could be read as an invitation to mayhem by the right wing militia that support him. An outcome the he believes will support his narrative,
With his message finalized and in spite of being asked not to go to Wisconsin as he would just add fuel to the fire Trump crashed the party in Kenosha
IT IS THE VIOLENCE - STUPID
So why on earth is everyone so convinced and/or terrified that Trump has four more years? There are those that argue the polls aren’t reflective, look what happened last time? But for the most part they believe that the independents and suburbanites will ultimately buy into the fear that Trump’s America is about to burst into flames and the that he is the best guy to put out them out. The rationale is as follows :He is the Law and Order President. Biden is responsible for the violence in Trump’s Presidency. So don’t vote for “Sleepy Joe” as he will carry on making America unsafe.
The Trump strategy is to divert the country’s woes in favor of the illusion that America is burning, mainly in Democratic cities perpetrated by the Democratic Party backed Black Lives Matter. As proof just focus on his response to the protests and violence that has followed police shootings most recently in Kenosha. He is taking a big chance in the belief that the overwhelming support for The Black Lives Matter campaign following the spate of police shootings is waning. The movement is being supported by corporations, sports teams and the citizenry. There is an empathy for the situation and the repetition of these killings is reinforcing the perception that the protestors are right. The highly respected Doc Rivers’ sobbed on TV blurting,“How dare the GOP talk about fear when we are the ones getting killed”.
But Trump has really nothing else he can run on. The virus deaths will soon be over two hundred thousand. The evictions and the food lines are growing while unemployment is over ten percent and as his advisors must be telling him - those in power get the lion share of blame. He is aiming to link Biden to the violence, urban terror and the prospects of blacks overrunning the suburbs. Trump’s whole history is littered with this tactic. His insistence on inviting the McCloskey vigilantes as key speakers to his convention bears witness to his decision is go full tilt in this direction. The Kenosha uprising during the convention jamboree was a blessing to his narrative.
BIDEN AND HARRIS DISTINGUISH BETWEEN PROTEST AND ILLEGALITY
Biden responded aggressively to the Trump juggernaut - “He is fermenting animosity and cheering on a spasm of violent protests to benefit himself politically”. Kamala Harris his Vice Presidential running mate and a former District Attorney of the largest state in the country saw the danger in the Trump scenario argued that, “We must always defend peaceful protest and peaceful protestors but we should not confuse them with those looting and committing acts of violence. We will not let these vigilantes and extremists derail the path to justice” Biden has been quick to add that Trump is pouring gasoline onto the racial flames but this does not justify the looting, the burning or any of the damage done by the protestors.
Harris and Biden are reassuring the anti Trump coalition, which is growing by the day, with screeds of the Republican establishment signing up. Trump’s line on the major cities wallowing in crime is an old one. The cry that the barbarians were marching into America and the suburbs didn’t work in 2018 - who can forget the caravans bearing down on America.
THE GENESIS OF THE KENOSHA UPRISING AND OUTCOME.
It is salutary to note one crucial fact - that had a white policeman not shot an unarmed black suspect in the back seven times there would have been not have been a Kenosha. What is more the sequence of events is on tape where a white policeman pushes a black man into his car holding the back of his shirt, then, in front of his three young children pumps seven bullets into his back. After the recent similar incidents it is amazing that this happened but it did. In no time the protestors poured into the streets as the videos of the bystanders went viral. The armed right counter protestors then followed as they have in every other tragedy. Why are they there - not to protest. However the white vigilantes did not emerge in a vacuum as local news reports and research from the Atlantic Council have shown.
For whatever reason the atmosphere in the City must have been fomenting prior to the incident. (At the risk of being a bore Jay H. Ell will remind the reader that this is happening in Trump’s America not Biden’s). The Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth reported to the local NBC News that vigilantes were patrolling the streets and asked to be deputized. The law officer outright refused. There is an active white right wing group in Kenosha. They had a FaceBook page entitled The Kenosha Guard which FaceBook subsequently took down because it violated its policy against militia organizations and glorified violence.
In addition to the local illegal militia, according to the regional NBC, Ray Roberts a black resident of Kenosha and an army vet, claimed that men from rural areas loaded with guns got into town, “You would see them driving around and no one stopping them”.
Following the shooting and the response to it the Kenosha Guard’s FaceBook page lit up and at 10.44pm that night went on a recruitment drive for “… any members that were willing to take up arms and defend the City from the evil thugs. No doubt they are planning on the next part of the City to burn tonight.”. There were similar repeated calls from multiple threads on Facebook and Reddit. These proceeded the murder of two protestors and the wounding of another. The Atlantic Council reported that there were several online discussions exhorting acts of violence while the conspiracy website InfoWars agitated for more of the fellow travelers to proceed to Kenosha, (All of this in Trump’s America).
The background of the shooter a seventeen year old who lived in the neighboring state of Illinois who attended Trump rallies has been part of the national news but an interview he gave to the local conservative outlet “The Daily Caller” has not. The latter reported that the alleged murderer stated that, “Our job is to protect this business” referring to the boarded up building he was standing in front of. And part of his ]ob is also to help people. If there is somebody hurt I am running into harms way. Thats why I have my rifle - obviously But I also have my med kit”.
Wisconsin is one of those states that allow open carry of guns. The Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin Mandela Barnes an African American stated that the shootings were not surprising and the white militias have been ignored for far too long. “How many times across the country do you see armed gunmen protesting walking into State Capitola and everyone saying it is ok. People treat it as some kind of normal activity that people are walking around with assault weapons”, he added.
As Trump and Pence repeated Joe Biden will take away your guns.
TRUMP ON VIOLENCE AND VIGILANTES IN KENOSHA - IS HE AN ENABLER?
It is really easy to know what criticism Trump thinks he has to defend himself from. Roy Cohn his original super ego taught him - you respond by turning the charges on them, doubling up. The psychologists call it projection. So it stands to reason that in relation to the Kenosha affair Trump tweeted that Biden was as “weak as hell and an enabler of anarchists and rioters”. It stands to reason that Trump offered no condemnation, solution or regret about the Jason Blake shooting. He tweeted that, “I will not stand for looting, arson violence and lawlessness on our streets”, At a Press Conference he stated “We will put out the fire. We will put out the flame. We will stop the violence very quickly”. In addition he laughed off the National Basketball Association - men and women, the pro tennis tour, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer’s powerful protests at the police shooting and support of Black Lives Matter. He gave them what he would consider the biggest criticism possible - their ratings were very bad,
He supported the vigilante seventeen year old who illegally bore weapons of war. In the teeth of contradictory video evidence he stated that the teenager acted in self defense. He argued that the matter is being “investigated” ignoring the reality that the vigilante has been arrested and charged with multiple crimes including two accounts of murder. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson went one further claiming that the assassin was doing what he had to do because local law officials were useless.
The question thus arises is Trump an enabler of these gun toting anarchists? Nobody in their right mind will allege that Trump is a co conspirator in this tragedy but at the very least one can argue he has done nothing to prevent it. On the contrary he has done everything to foster the illegal gangsterism of vigilantes.
Donald Trump alluded to the intervention of the “second amendment people” since he ran in 2016 against Hillary Clinton. Believing like everyone else did at the time that he was going to lose, he stated that the election was rigged and the only people who could do anything about it were “the second amendment” people. Trump has made it quite clear that he is not going to risk losing support of the far right whatever their position may be. From the KKK’s David Duke to all the other fellow travelers it has been wink wink nod nod. His backing of right wing fanatics was evident by the statements that among the Neo Nazis in Charlottesville like the QAnon anarchists there were good people. QAnon has been characterized as domestic terrorists by the law agencies.
THE BINARY DECISION: TRUMP’S VIGILANTE AMERICA v BIDEN’S UNIFIED AMERICA
The Trump mantra Is simple the protestors enabled by Biden are threatening America and reducing it to chaos. This propaganda was repeated again and again at the Trump Convention. (Interestingly the chaos in the streets of Obama's America is what he ran on. He promised he would make America safe. Needless to say by his own admission he has failed!). Lest there be any doubt as to his preference and objective, his most loyal sidekick Kellyanne Conway bluntly stated that the more chaos and violence the greater Trump rates his chances. As a corollary Biden is attacked as being the leader of a violent revolution with his socialist policies. Rather than investigate the right wing groups that have killed close on a hundred victims, Trump’s fixer, Bill Barr, (the previous one is in jail), will investigate the Black Lives Matter Protest movement.
It is amazing how brazen Trump is making the electoral choice the right of vigilantes to enforce Law and Order. He backed an alleged murderer, seen on video by the world shooting fleeing protestors. This is his America. This is what he is running on. He has ignored the plight of repeated instances of shootings by white police of unarmed black men and has openly supported this type of street action. For the moment he has successfully diverted attention from the country’s woes that he has failed to address.
Biden for his part has forcefully replied laying the blame for the parlous state the country is in squarely at Trump’s door. Eloquently he made clear the choice America faced. With his near half century record it is hard to rationally argue that he doesn’t support law and order. Nor can anyone call him a Socialist. However to Trump and his cult it doesn’t matter. The latter still believe that his inauguration was attended by the largest audience in history and that he won the popular vote because three million illegals voted for Hillary.
Biden must not allow himself to get sucked too far into Trump’s narrative. His mission is to focus on racial equality, return America to economic and health stability and to regain the soul of the nation.
MEANWHILE THE SCANDALS EXPLODE AROUND TRUMP
While everyone is awaiting Barr and Lindsey Graham’s bombshells against Biden and Hunter not a day passes without another expose of the corrupt Trump Presidency. Trump’s two remaining powerful allies, Fox News and his fixer Attorney General Barr, came under heavy fire in three books that immediately became best sellers. Hoax by Brian Stelter lays bare the inner stories of the incestuous Fox and Trump relationship. One of the more chilling tales Stelter related was when the Attorney General of the United State’s of America, aka Trump’s Fixer, went to Rupert Murdoch to have Judge Napolitano, Fox’s legal analyst, removed from the nework as he had come to the conclusion that Trump had committed impeachable offenses.
Just a few gems from New York Times’s Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Schmidt’s spellbinder Donald Trump v The United States of America - here it was learned that Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein stopped Robert Mueller from investigating Donald Trump’s personal ties to Russia. Schmidt detailed how he succeeded in getting the WhiteHouse Counsel Don McGahn to admit that by his behavior he had damaged the Office of the President. Schmidt uncovered Trump’s unexplained trip to the Walter Reed Medical Facility. Trump with his characteristic delusional paranoia responded that he never suffered a series of mini strokes, precipitating debate about his health.
Stephanie Wolkoff’s expose Melania and Me became the number one best seller in the country in one day. An aggrieved Ms Wolkoff outlined that the Trumps including Melania dumped her under the bus laying the blame of the missing fifty million dollars from Trump’s inaugural at her door. In the interim the scandal has been investigated by three entities and another bunch of the Trump and the RNC’s inner circle face corruption charges. This story really has legs as like Mary Trump the authoress has tapes of discussions with Melania.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
The myth that Donald Trump’s supporters are more motivated to vote for him than Biden’s are is not backed by the facts or polls. Following the Conventions the Biden/Harris ticket roped in a ton more money than did the Trump/Pence duo. The Democrats raised three hundred and sixty - four million dollars in August which is an all time electoral record.
Biden and Harris need to repeat their counter narrative daily and focus the country on the disaster Trump has created. They have to win the election Trump is not going to lose it. Remember they are running against someone whose supporters still maintain that he had the largest inauguration audience in history and who persuaded banks to loan him billions even after he had gone bankrupt six times.
When Joe and Jill go to Kenosha will the Kenosha Guard call out its members to assemble with guns to prevent them from looting? They have been given permission by Trump to start shooting when the looting starts.
On September 8, Robert Cohen’s book will hit the shelves.
Would you buy a timeshare from Donald Trump?
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