Trump Media Switcheroos in Action

            The Line-Ups

This past week, after agreeing to stop separating illegal immigrants from their minor children at the southeastern U.S. border as a condition of applying for refugee or asylee status (following a world-wide outcry and hundreds of demonstrations), Donald Trump publicly hosted “Angel Families” at a White House event focused on family members of U.S. children killed by illegal immigrants.

He didn’t mention, at the reality show-like event, that there are more murders per capita committed in the country by native-born individuals than by immigrants.

That would be truth telling, and when Donald Trump showcases grieving parents and throws a pity party, it isn’t to get to the full truth but just enough of it to sway or retain the loyalty of his base.

His stupid, faithful, blind, deaf, but certainly not silent base. Now there’s the real pity party.

The parents of the murdered children deserve our empathy and our support, but trotting them out before microphones only to trample all over the reputation of law-abiding immigrants who in recent months have simply tried to enter the country to claim asylum status is to misuse and abuse the sorrow of bereft parents.

That’s our Prez: Trafficking in the legitimate bereavement of parents of dead children:

Describing one dead child from his photo as “like Tom Selleck, but better looking.” Then bizarrely autographing all eleven of the enlarged photos of the dead children. I just can’t . . . .

We’ve seen the Trump bait and switch act before.

During the 2016 presidential election, just as Trump’s 2005 Access Hollywood tape hit the airways and Trump looked vulnerable, the showman responded with a similarly out-of-sync, offensive maneuver.

That is, first the country was treated to the taped Trump boasting to Billy Bush about oogling half-nude teenage beauty contest contestants in their dressing rooms and kissing and groping just about any woman for whom he had a yen: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

By now at least sixteen women have made public accusations against Trump for his illegal sexual groping and assaults. Several matters are currently being litigated in the courts.

Back in October 2016 when the Access Hollywood tape became notorious (efforts to out other tapes from similar shows have been met with a stone wall of purported copyright protections), Trump responded by dragging three women who had in the 1990s accused Bill Clinton of inappropriate sexual conduct to the television monitors just prior to his second debate with Hillary Clinton for an “interview”—in a manner of speaking.

On that occasion Trump also spotlighted a fourth woman whose purported rapist was briefly (and reluctantly) represented by Hillary Clinton as her court-appointed attorney at the beginning of her legal career in 1975. (Judges tend to do that: appoint attorneys who are either affiliated with public defender offices or have the bad luck to be present in the courtroom when appointed defense counsel is needed. In this case, the defendant also requested that his appointed counsel be a woman. All counsel are at risk of such appointments on occasion.) Here, the victim had a grudge against Clinton for doing her job and negotiating a reduced sentence.

The Trump campaign conspicuously placed the three Bill Clinton accusers behind the Trump party in the studio seating for the presidential debate. Obviously the reason for this seating was to rattle Hillary Clinton, who of course had nothing to do with the interactions—if any—that these three women had had two decades or more earlier with her husband.

And Hillary, to her credit, ignored these women (who seemed embarrassed to be trotted out by Trump) and concentrated instead on outdebating the unprepared Donald Trump, whose only other noticeable debate tactic was to hover menacingly over Hillary, looming over her shoulder and moving around the stage behind her like a giant voodoo shadow when she spoke.

An altogether eerie and ominous tableau.

Hence, we can easily point to two different line-ups of people rightfully suffering or claiming to have been wronged: dragged out into Trump’s reality television spotlight to abruptly change the subject (when it had become a danger to Trump) and upend serious concerns in the news before the American public.

            The Tweets

What Trump has done by such live presentations of aggrieved individuals, he has also frequently attempted to accomplish by disruptive tweets. Several come to mind.

— During March 2017 as reports about connections between the Trump campaign staff and Russian officials gained traction, Trump suddenly and without any evidence began accusing the Obama administration of having wiretapped his telephones in Trump Tower during the election.

This turned out after formal DOJ review to be completely FALSE.

— Then, in September 2017, as the GOP failure to pass a last-ditch healthcare bill exemplified Republican incompetence at enacting legislation and fulfilling major campaign promises, Trump fabricated an attack on the patriotism of NFL players who had undertaken a silent protest against racism on the playing fields during the National Anthem that originated peacefully with NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

The President, who has publicly, ineptly, and unsuccessfully tried to mouth the words of the National Anthem during several televised ceremonies, again changed the subject on a national stage purely by design.

The accusation that the NFL players are unpatriotic is, of course, entirely FALSE. The players, black, Hispanic, mixed, and white, are clearly more patriotic than the manipulative Trump himself, who countered by bullying the NFL into enacting penalties for players who kneel on the field prior to a game.

— A few months earlier Jared Kushner’s efforts to create a “back channel” for communications between Trump officials and the Russians during a meeting with Sergei Kislyak, a senior diplomat and Russia’s former ambassador to the U.S., had caused a stir. Kushner had no security clearance and was attempting to subvert the usual diplomatic channels between countries at a time when Russian connections with the Trump campaign were not entirely understood and were deeply suspect.

Donald Trump then tweeted using the phrase “covfefe,” clearly just another of his many typographical (and spelling) errors, and he led the press on a merry twitter chase to decipher the meaning of the nonsense word. The Kislyak connection was briefly abandoned.

— Later in 2017, as the incendiary Roy Moore special Senate campaign in Alabama neared a conclusion, with explicit Trump support barely keeping it competitive, Trump secured the release—with much fanfare—of three U.S. basketball players who had shoplifted in China and been jailed there as a result. Trump used his twitter account to repeatedly attack the father of one of the players for his refusal to publicly thank Our Dear Leader.

Moore famously lost the election, and a Democrat took the seat for the first time in modern Alabama history.

— Not long before the basketball players’ shoplifting episode, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s description of Trump as a “moron” was described in a broadcast by NBC. Tillerson did not retract his description. He even became, briefly, something of a national hero for speaking truth to power.

Trump’s reaction was to threaten the license of NBC—which was beyond his presidential powers to accomplish—and thereby cause the news of Tillerson’s opinion of Trump to quickly fade from the headlines.

Avoiding scrutiny and dismay by diverting to another topic is an age-old tactic to change the subject. Switching the playbill and confusing the listener can throw an opponent’s objections into disarray, at least temporarily. And chaos and disarray are staples of the Trump presidency. What muddies the water for outsiders keeps secrets safer for insiders. At least so far in this fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants administration.

Donald Trump’s record of avoiding or attempting to avoid blame for the breathtaking cruelty and equally breathtaking incompetence of his administration is well-established.

Ready for the next Trump Reality Television line-up, anyone? North Korean nuclear bomb-makers? Canadian whisky and washing-machine manufacturers? Roger Stone in full lying mode? Julian Assange with a day pass from the Ecuadorian embassy?  

Take your pick. You may even be asked to answer a few questions at the end of the show to gauge your gullibility and susceptibility. Inquiring minds want to know.