'Violence, Chaos' Trump Clear Signal To Followers; Manic Sunday Tweetstorm, 89 Times, In 3 1/2 Hrs.
'Trump’s signal to his followers is clear: Violence & chaos are my only hope.' Heather Digby Parton, Salon, Aug. 31, 2020. Excerpts, Ed:
President Trump was having a normal one on Sunday morning, tweeting & retweeting 89 times over the course of three & a half hours. Many of them were tweets of polling numbers from obscure firms showing him in the lead after the Republican convention. But most of the tweets & retweets were incitement to violence among his true believers & complaints about “Democrat cities,” an ongoing mantra which he seems to think is a slam dunk to get him re-elected.
He repeatedly insulted & mocked Joe Biden, of course, & Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler will undoubtedly have to change his phone number after the president posted it on Twitter so his followers could call & demand his resignation.
He also showed support for one of his fans in Wisconsin: (See Tweet)
It was a manic tweet spree & one that couldn’t have show the president’s state of mind any more clearly. Biden has said Trump is “rooting for violence,” & I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue with that. Trump’s surrogates are saying it right out loud. Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump whether she agreed with Kellyanne C. that “the more chaos & anarchy & vandalism & violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety & law & order.” Lara answered, “Well, I think it paints a very clear picture.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., on CNN agreed with Trump that the Kenosha shootings by a 17-yr-old Trump fan were understandable. Trump also publicly berated Wisc. Gov. Tony Evers for failing to call in the National Guard hours after Evers had already done so. Trump later tweeted about Portland mayor Wheeler, calling him a “dummy” saying, “He would like to blame me & the federal government for going in, but he hasn’t seen anything yet. We have only been there with a small group to defend our U.S. courthouse, because he couldn’t do it.”
Conway’s little gaffe in which she admitted that the WH & the Trump campaign believe street violence is good for them illuminates the president’s fanning of the flames. He has finally grasped that he cannot unilaterally sending in a bunch of federal cops, as he did in Washington to stage his photo-op last June. Instead, he’s not-very-subtly signaling to his gun-toting fans that they are going to have to take action on their own if they hope to scare people into voting for him. Leave the propaganda to him, just ramp up the chaos. He tweeted that MAGA “protesters” who came to Portland in a caravan on Saturday night were “Great Patriots!” & later explained why their behavior was understandable. *Watch Videos:
Link to tweet
Ron Brownstein of 'The Atlantic' wondered whether “suburban voters look at these pictures & say, ‘yes, where I belong is in the same political coalition as men who crowd into pickup trucks w/guns, as in Bosnia 1998 or a Third World dictatorship?'” (Those huge flags flying behind them reminded me of men crowded “into pickup trucks w/guns,” as in ISIS fighters.). It’s a jarringly familiar sight, but it doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen in America before. The only thing he knows how to do is point a finger at “the other” & then promise people that he’s the only one who can save them. He feels confident that he’s got the troops to back him up, one way or the other. But will anyone will believe that Trump is the man who can save America from all this mayhem he is creating. After all, he’s been promising to do that ever since he came down that elevator. Here he is at the 2016 Republican convention:
I guess that’s yet another promise he’ll fulfill after he makes America Great Again- Again.
More, https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trumps-signal-to-his-followers-is-clear-violence-and-chaos-are-my-only-hope
Link to tweet
