June 1, 2020

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH

Donald Trump doesn’t try to prevent chaos. Indeed, he thrives on it.

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Every day is a new day for “The Donald Trump Show” reality TV presidency, and he wakes up relishing how he can can lead the press around by the leash with sensationalistic tweets and startling statements and actions. Each day is a new episode in his White House version of “The Apprentice.'“

Trump doesn’t seek to create order and a functioning government. His goal is just the opposite. Disorder allows him cover to perform pernicious acts and seize new powers to “dismantle the administrative state.” One can even argue that he initially saw the Coronavirus — and then the implosion of the economy due to his inaction — as an opportunity to blame the Democrats, fire inspector generals, reignite his bromance with Putin, roll back environmental protections, withdraw from WHO, abrogate the Open Skies treaty and much more in the way of actions harmful to Americans.

As for the Coronavirus, a White House aide is being quoted today as saying, “He [Trump] is over that.” However, the confirmed COVID-19 death counts have climbed past 104,000, after Trump had tried to opportunistically position himself as the overseer of containing the Coronavirus — until his deranged bizarre treatments were met with ridicule and the virus beat him at his game (although he continues to obstruct testing and the shortage of Personal Protective Equipment PPE’s). He would walk over the dead bodies of Coronavirus victims without blinking, trying to craft a way to take advantage of the massive carnage.

It is no surprise then that the man who by The Washington Post’s count has told more than 19,000 lies announced the evening of June 1, from the White House Rose Garden, that he was going to likely invoke the Insurrection Act that would allow him to send US military forces into US cities to stop the protests and ancillary looting by groups and persons unknown (which didn’t stop Trump from blaming it on Antifa, his new proxy for left-wing Democrats). Forget that it is debatable whether he can deploy any troops except to individual states whose governors request them.

Out of the chaos created by George Floyd’s death — particularly the amazing uprising of protesters against racist police killings, amidst a vicious pandemic — Trump decided that his path out of this chaos would be to follow the “law and order” strongmen such as Bull Connor, George Wallace and Richard Nixon. In his Monday evening statement, he affirmed that he will use brute force to stop protestors — taking special note that he was bringing the military into DC, maybe because he had to retreat to a WH bunker this weekend and have the interior White House lights turned off last night — and the mysterious looters who seem to operate separately.

Only a couple of weeks ago, Trump was calling anti-shelter-in-place protesters “freedom fighters” and hailing, in particular, the heavily armed anti-lockdown protesters who invaded the capital of Michigan, guns at the ready, and aggressively confronted police who did not push back. But, Trump works out of the center of chaos, and now was the right moment — with COVID-19 still raging and the economy further imploding as a result of the looting at the time many states were foolishly set to “reopen” — as he sees it to “crack down” on demonstrations for justice.

Just shortly before he made his Rose Garden statement, hundreds of protesters kneeling in Lafayette Square, across from the front of the White House, were suddenly forced to move away from the proximity of the White House by the use of tear gas and rubber bullets. Why? Because amidst the chaos, Trump wanted a photo-op at St. John’s Church, which was partially burned the night before, and the protesters were blocking a clear path for him to be photographed walking toward St. John’s, hypocritically carrying a Bible, where he only stayed long enough for cameras to take shots, and for him to hold the Bible upside down for a photo.

Interestingly, according to a Monday evening Washington Post update:

The Right Rev. Mariann Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, said she learned of Trump's visit by watching it on the news.

“I don’t want President Trump speaking for St. John’s,” Budde said.

“I am outraged,” she said, with pauses emphasizing her anger as her voice slightly trembled. “I am the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and was not given even a courtesy call that they would be clearing with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop, holding a Bible, one that declares that God is love and when everything he has said and done is to inflame violence."

She said the church disassociates itself from the messages of the president. "We hold the teachings of our sacred texts to be so so grounding to our lives and everything we do and it is about love of neighbor and sacrificial love and justice," she said.

But Trump doesn’t care a whit about the hypocritical chaos he leaves in his wake or that he must respond to. Chaos is what gives him room to start afresh with a new narrative each day. Chaos is what eliminates historical context to his nefarious and sociopathic actions. Chaos is what partially leaves the White House press corps unable to hold him accountable for his lies and contradictory actions because chaos jettisons facts and replaces them with “alternative realities.” Chaos is what allows for the repetition of “the big lie” until it becomes a hammered-home pseudo-reality.

Trump sees chaos and death as fertile opportunities to reset the clock and launch a new plan of attack, which the press willingly amplifies. Operating within the swirling brew of chaos, there is no accountability because there is nothing firm to hold on to.

Now, Trump will tell his cult followers that it was “leftist” protesters and criminal looters who stopped the economy from energetically rebounding, when it was never going to happen in the next few months— as he seeks to avoid blame. He will attribute the inevitable second wave of Coronavirus infections and deaths to the infections that are likely to occur among many protesters, but the major cause will be the “Dear Leader’s” rushed “reopening” with many companies failing to abide — a deadly negligence condoned and encouraged by the Trump administration — by voluntary OSHA guidelines to prevent infection transmission.

Trump’s week-long Twitter dust-up was losing its impact as a press diversion from his responsibility for tens of thousands of ongoing COVID-19 deaths. But chaos came to his assistance, as it often does, and few are better at exploiting it. Now, he has diverted the narrative to the “culpability” of those protesting racial injustice in America — particularly at the hands of a cop.

Yes, for Trump, chaos presents a multitude of opportunities. Chaos can be a con man’s best friend..

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