Will Trump's Disinformation Presidency Lead to Civil War?

[justaprogressive]

Ten years ago this week, Donald Trump rode down an elevator, surrounded by make-believe supporters who had been paid to cheer him, and delivered a rambling speech declaring his candidacy for president. It was dark. The United States, he bellowed, had “become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.” The nation was “getting weaker.” It was no longer great. Its leaders were “stupid,” “losers,” “morally corrupt,” and “selling this country down the drain.” Mexico was sending “rapists” across the border to the United States. Unemployment was 21 percent. (Actually, it was 5.3 percent.) The US nuclear arsenal “doesn’t work.” (It did.) He laid it on thick: “We’ve got nothing…We’re dying…We’re becoming a third-world country…Sadly, the American dream is dead.”

Ever since then, Trump has been running a disinformation campaign of doom and gloom, depicting the United States as a disastrous hellscape—that is, whenever it serves his perverted political purposes. In his first inaugural address, he characterized the nation as being racked with “American carnage.” During the 2020 contest, he accused Joe Biden of plotting with radicals, antifa, and communists to literally destroy America.

His 2024 presidential endeavor was more a propaganda operation than a political campaign. He claimed Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs, Venezuelan criminal migrants had taken control of towns across the Midwest, schools were performing gender transition operations on children without informing parents, and Biden and Vice President Harris were purposefully importing millions of undocumented people (and using a phone app that told cartel heads where to drop off these migrants). He spewed outrageous and outlandish lies to support an unfounded narrative: America was apocalyptic.

This was both madness and method. The goal of disinformation is to shape perceptions. If Trump could convince voters that they were imperiled by mobs of barbarous pet-eating brown people and that Biden and Harris were in cahoots with savages and marauders, then they’d have little choice but to vote for him. He was selling a fictitious script to incite fear and loathing, believing that would win him support.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/06/donald-trump-los-angeles-ice-protests-kristi-noem-alex-padilla/

[Fiendish Thingy]

1. Nuclear powers don't have civil wars

They could have a military coup, and certainly we are seeing political violence, but there will never be another blue vs gray civil war in the US.

[TheProle]

2. It's insidious in its own right

A festering mistrust and distrust that eats away at the broader culture and reinforces a paranoid and hostile political tribalism.

Do you shop at Walmart or CostCo?
Do you post on X or Bluesky?
Do you wear a mask for health reasons?
What car do you drive?
What musicians do you listen to?
Are you for AI or agin' it?

Between dunking on the opposition and signalling our own virtues, a lot of Americans are fighting a civil war in their minds every day.

And, no doubt, enemies and trolls will seek to drive those wedges deeper into our communities.

[Fiendish Thingy]

5. Disinformation and misinformation definitely feeds into tribalism and polarization

And can foment political violence.

But the premise of the OP is it will lead to civil war, which is not possible with a nuclear power.

[Towlie]

3. And yet, at the bottom of your post you say "Without facts, you can't have truth."

[Fiendish Thingy]

4. Precisely, hence my position

Not sure what point you’re trying to make.

[Towlie]

6. Not important that you understand as long as others here do.

[Fiendish Thingy]

7. Ooh, so cryptic and mysterious!

Well, if anyone else understands your post, perhaps they will explain it to little ol’ me…