Donald Trump and his Trumpites obviously think it’s great when an angry customer at a Target store breaks the arm of an employee when the employee asks the customer to wear a very necessary face mask (see https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/05/12/target-store-mask-fight-orig-mg.cnn).
Here at AP, from time to time, we look to literature to help us think about Donald Trump and his views about what’s right and what’s wrong.
For example, on April 25 (which seems like a long time ago), we referred to a five-word verse, “Distracted from distraction by distraction," in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, to show how Trump skillfully uses lies to distract his base from seeing what needs to be seen (https://www.apocryphalpress.com/2020/04/25/a-spectacular-example-of-trump-s-limitless-ability-for-self-delusion-all-as-explained-by-associate-solitary-reporter-anthony-newcom/).
And now that he’s stymied by his own public health officials who undercut his wishful thinking about re-opening the country, he’s once again turned to his favorite tool, Distraction, by attacking President Obama, by accusing the former President of blatantly trying to entrap Michael Flynn, then Trump’s National Security Advisor (see Tina Nguyen’s column in today’s Politico,
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/12/trump-obamagate-distraction-253139, )
As Nguyen says, “The blunderbuss trumpeting of an anti-Obama narrative is a tactic Trump has employed throughout his political career…..from the baseless [idea that] the president is not an American citizen, [to] Obama [tapped] my [Trump’s] phones…In each case, the real estate developer-turned ********* has used these stories to distract [emphasis added] from unwelcome stories while elevating himself and exciting his base. The questionable details are rarely important."
DNC Chair Tom Perez was having coffee with associate solitary reporter Keith Coleman early this morning to discuss Nguyen’s column. He told Coleman that in all his many years in politics he’d never experienced a man in Trump’s posiiton who lies so flagrantly.
In other news, both Perez and Coleman noticed the report in today's Times that Son-in-Law-in-Chief Jared Kushner says that maybe the presidential election should be postponed because of COVID-19.
That would, of course (and even Kushner knows this) require Congressional approval, and that ain’t gonna happen, because Daughter-in-Law-in Chief Lara Trump is determined that the RNC will adhere to its very dangerous plan to re-nominate Trump at a massive event in Charlotte in August, with absolutely no social distancing.