Trump and Maxwell

If they put that one on Fox in the evening, Trump's going to be bleeding from the ears.

Is Trump Trying to Start a "Racial Holy War"?

Trump is not seeking to preserve order in cities, he is trying to cause disorder. President Donald Trump is planning to deploy federal agents to Chicago and possibly other Democrat-run cities as he continues to assert federal power and use the Department of Homeland Security in unprecedented, politicized ways.

DHS is slated to send about 150 Homeland Security Investigations agents to Chicago to help local law enforcement deal with a spike in crime, according to an official with direct knowledge of the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. "Help", my ass. Federal secret police, hereinafter "the Trumpstapo", are not welcome in the cities that Trump is ordering them to go to.

This is a desperate move by Trump to provoke violent civil unrest, so see if he can get his Reichstag moment. The proof is that that the Trumpstapo's operations in Portland is causing more demonstrations. The Trumpstapo has been energizing the demonstrators, giving them something else to demonstrate about.

The Trumpstapo deployment is a naked attempt to reverse Trump's sagging poll numbers. He is incapable of doing anything to help people, it is not in his nature. Trump is bored by the pandemic. Fighting an infectious disease takes dedication and diligence, things that Trump lacks in spades.

But sparking unrest in the streets, unrest that would play out on television? Unrest that would air 24/7 on Fox? Trump will revel in that. The Trumpstapo has already shown all of the restraint of Alabama State Troopers during the civil rights protests. Trump is using his Trumpstapo to create disorder, to give him something to campaign on, to give him an issue to try and raise up his currently-failing campaign.

The Trumpstapo can't go out and club down the coronavirus or the people caring for COVID patents. So Trump will just have to try and gin up a crisis to motivate his fearful base that "the darkies are coming for your wimmin". The white supremacists have been yammering for decades about a racial holy war. It would seem that Trump has been listening to them.

Here comes the Trumpstapo!

ETA:

Donnie, Lad, Everybody Working For You Hates You (Even Stephen Miller)

That'll Leave a Mark

The Lincoln Project on our Traitor-in-Chief

You Can Almost Feel the Sad

Trump, getting off AF1, looked like a guy who was taken to the cleaners at the blackjack table:

When you thought a million people were coming to your rally but only 6,000 showed up :(pic.twitter.com/jPHc0EfciK

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) June 21, 2020

No better at the White House:

For a guy who has always been so self-conscious of his image, this is a pretty bad look.

The Lincoln Project didn't waste any time:

Heads are going to be rolling in his campaign staff.

Trump Lies About Obama and Whines That People Should Accept Police Brutality If They Have Jobs

We achieved the lowest black, Hispanic, and Asian unemployment rates in American history. And we will do it again. We’ll do it again. We’re fighting for school choice, which really is the civil rights of all time in this country. Frankly, school choice is the civil rights statement of the year, of the decade, and probably beyond — because all children have to have access to quality education. A child’s zip code in America should never determine their future, and that’s what was happening. So we’re very, very strong on school choice, and I hope everybody remembers that. And it’s happening. It’s already happened, but it’s happening. We have tremendous opposition from people that know they shouldn’t be opposing it. School choice.
...
And I just want to say we’ve done incredibly well. We’re doing well. Things are happening that nobody can even believe. Our country is opening up. And it’s opening up rapidly. We had the best unemployment and employment. We had best unemployment and employment numbers — think of that — in the history of our country. We’re up to almost 160 million people working. There was never anything even close. And that’s for almost every group including black, Hispanic, Asian, women, young people, old people, young people without a high school diploma. Every group. Everybody was thrilled. Everybody had — just about –high-paying jobs.

You have that right. When the topic du jour is cops killing people of color, Trump whines about the economy and school choice. Trump also bleated about equal opportunity, blithely forgetting his own racist past when he was actively discriminating against Black people looking for housing.

He also just keeps lying about Obama.

President Obama and Vice President Biden never even tried to fix this during their eight-year period. The reason they didn’t try is because they had no idea how to do it. And it is a complex situation.

That is a massive and honking lie. As I've explained in my previous post, Trump not only stopped ongoing efforts to deal with police misconduct, he actually encouraged more misconduct. President Obama stopped transferring military gear to civilian cops, Trump resumed it. Trump abandoned investigations into police misconduct. Obama opened civil rights investigations into brutal police misconduct, Trump abandoned the ones that were going on and sharply reduced new ones (if not canceling them outright).

The truth of the matter is that Trump has been agreeable with police using excessive force and killing people of color. Trump figured that as long as the economy was peachy, nobody would notice that the cops have been murdering folks.

To shift gears a little:

Trump's little trip to Walter Reed turned out to be, as I suggested at the time, a pack of lies. And so is this.

Distracted Donnie

The "Mourning in America" ad cost the Lincoln Project $10K to make and $5K to run on Tucker Carlson's show, where the guy it was targeted at exploded in rage on Twitter. The ad has now had over 2 million views on YouTube.

They raised over $2 million from it. Pretty good ROI.

Trump Buries Science

None of this is surprising:

The Trump administration shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.

The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.

It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day,” according to a CDC official.

"Science" and "facts" are anathema to Trump. He's pretty much a believer in witchcraft and magical thinking. Trump believes that if he orders it, by the strength of his will alone, the coronavirus will simply go away.

The last leader of a nation who believed that he could bend reality to his will was some mustachioed German dude, who "resigned" seventy-five years ago. It didn't work too well for him, either.

Yes, it's pretty much Mourning in America. And Trump is going snakeshit over this ad:

Ouch. Truth hurts, eh, Donnie?