One unverified accounting of some of the acting president’s biggest failures puts the average time to failure at 4.6 years. But that is skewed a bit by outliers. The median is 4 years. Donald Trump has had some spectacular failures in his career. But no big problem, he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in 2011: “I’ve used the laws of this country to pare debt. … We’ll have the company. We’ll throw it into a chapter. We’ll negotiate with the banks. We’ll make a fantastic deal. You know, it’s like on ‘The Apprentice.’ It’s not personal. It’s just business.”
Trump fails, someone else eats the losses.
As we come up on the four-year anniversary of the Trump Organization’s acquisition of the White House, he seems on track to drive the business of state into the ground on a familiar schedule.
Jennifer Rubin had a busy Sunday, publishing two columns at the Washington Post critical of the acting president’s mismanagement. The RNC convention last week worked at stoking the fears of white Americans across the country as Trump has his entire presidency. When all else fails, he plays that eponymous card he always plays.
Rubin writes:
He vowed to keep suburbs (read: White suburbs) safe from integrated housing (read: Black people). He encouraged police not to be “too nice” in handling suspects. He denies systemic racism and instead paints all protesters as anarchists, socialists and violent extremists. He has refused to condemn police officers who kill unarmed Black men and women or White armed groups engaged in violence. He invited to the Republican National Convention a couple charged with a felony for brandishing weapons at Black Lives Matter marchers. President Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway confesses the more violence in the streets, the better for him.
White supremacists reveling in the violence they themselves stoke has a name — accelerationism — she writes, quoting a Brookings Institution report:
Some white supremacists already see the riots and broader polarization as vindication of this idea, and law enforcement and civil society activists concerned about the growth of extremism should watch to see if this idea takes further hold within white supremacist groups and organizations in the coming weeks and months.
Accelerationism is the idea that white supremacists should try to increase civil disorder — accelerate it — in order to foster polarization that will tear apart the current political order. The System (usually capitalized), they believe, has only a finite number of collaborators and lackeys to prop it up. Accelerationists hope to set off a series of chain reactions, with violence fomenting violence, and in the ensuing cycle more and more people join the fray. When confronted with extremes, so the theory goes, those in the middle will be forced off the fence and go to the side of the white supremacists.
The acting president has white supremacist leanings, but we know by now his only real interest is himself. With over 200,000 projected deaths by Election Day from his failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and with unemployment at Great Depression levels, Trump has all the more incentive for concealing his own failure by setting fire to the business to hide the bodies and collect the insurance money. It’s his M.O.
With his frenzied blast of 89 tweet Sunday morning, Trump is flinging gasoline on a situation already smoldering from protest-adjacent killings in Kenosha, Wisc. and Portland, Ore, over the last week.
Rubin continues:
A few Democrats have figured out what is going on. Appearing on CNN, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) observed, “They believe the violence is helpful to them. And the president is only motivated by one thing: ‘What is in it for him?’ He sees this violence — and his ability to agitate more of it — as useful to his campaign.” He added, “What it does to the country, the loss of life, he doesn’t care.”
Biden is now planning to travel on Monday (not clear where he will go) to — again — denounce the violence. But he should also go on offense. Trump incites violence. Trump encourages vigilantism. Trump refuses to acknowledge that slogans such as Blue Lives Matter can encourage vigilantes. (The White suspect who allegedly killed two people in Kenosha, Wis., apparently attended a Trump rally and brandished the Blue Lives Matter slogan.) Biden should demand Trump denounce shootings of unarmed Black men, stop Republican obstruction to police reform, cease veneration of symbols of white supremacy such as the Confederate flag and decry White armed groups.
Rubin’s earlier post called out the absurdity of believing the fading reality show performer will preserve order at a time twice as many Americans who died on September 11 are dying each week:
No wonder Trump loves to highlight any domestic scene of disorder, mayhem and looting he can to frighten White Americans, arguing that if law enforcement “dominates the streets,” we will have public order. This is preposterous. We cannot go to war with millions of demonstrators. That’s simply impossible, not to mention morally objectionable. The demands of the protesters, among them police reform and voting rights legislation are entirely legitimate. But so long as Trump denies the legitimacy of these concerns and the presence of systemic racism, we will not have domestic tranquility.
Other Americans’ concerns are not his. Making things worse is the hostility of red America to losing control of “their” country. One Portland resident explained an alleged tacit alliance between Patriot Prayer, the Proud Boys, etc., and local law enforcement. The viral thread is captured by Thread Reader:
Speaking of white rage, here is an example from Alaska over the weekend:
I wish I had something more positive to offer, but these types are seriously threatened. Many are armed. And as Kellyanne Conway said, “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.” They’re looking for a war, and Trump has made his living off giving the marks what they want.
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