Donald Trump has a whole new “Gestapo” problem
In the days since Donald Trump has sent federal agents to Portland, he’s already being met with significant pushback across the country – which is only likely to get worse with his tendency to regularly melt down during the COVID briefings he’s decided to resume giving. After the earliest reports of people in Portland being seized by unidentified agents, variations of #TrumpGestapo started appropriately trending on Twitter, making light of what looks like a blatant authoritarian power grab.
One group, calling itself the Really American PAC has decided to take things a step further, making a commercial that really tries to make the name stick. They play a series of clips showing how Donald Trump’s demented rhetoric has only helped escalate violence throughout the country from the moment he announced his candidacy in 2015 and started holding rallies where he incited cheering supporters to assault any protestors who got too close.
Not only does it show that Trump’s been building up to this moment for a long time and anyone who even barely follows politics can connect the dots, it also shows that his campaign for president has always been dependent on how effective Trump is at playing a strongman – from his absurd declaration that “I alone can fix it” at the 2016 Republican convention, to his absurd and blatantly racist rants about a caravan traveling to the United States, all the way to now where he’s rambling about crimewaves in major cities and ignoring the very real threat COVID-19 poses.
Donald Trump may see himself as a strongman and so do many of his supporters, but he’s not a very good one – he somehow always contributes to the real crises America is facing, while making up ones that are non-existent. This is the message we have to push louder than ever if we’re to beat him and take back the White House on November 3.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making