Donald Trump’s Phoenix rally is already shaping up to be a staged debacle
By any rational standards, Donald Trump’s decision to hold a rally in Phoenix this week is inexplicable. The nation is coming off a tragedy and crisis in Charlottesville, and no politicians should be campaigning right now. Trump in particular is on thin ice, and should be focused on governing, not congratulatory pep rallies. And there’s a very real danger that his white supremacist supporters will show up and turn violent. And yet the inappropriateness of the rally may be Trump’s entire point. Scattered evidence says it’s already shaping up to be a staged debacle.
Last night one of Donald Trump’s own most prominent online supporters, Mike Cernovich, made this admission on Twitter: “I’m told some Trump supporters will be wearing ANTIFA attire and going undercover during Trump Phoenix rally” (link). And then today a Craigslist ad surfaced which supposedly shows the Trump campaign hiring minorities to show up to the rally and pretend to be Trump supporters (link). Neither of these assertions is independently confirmable as of yet, but the latter got the attention of MSNBC host Joy Reid, who retweeted it and added “Jesus, Mary and casting director.”
The scary part is that it’s entirely believable that Trump’s white supremacist fans would show up dressed as anti-Trump protesters so they can cause trouble and cause the protesters to get blamed. And no one will be shocked if it turns out Trump really is hiring people to show up and pretend to be his supporters; after all, he was caught hiring seat fillers for his poorly attended inauguration. And of course there’s the widespread speculation, which Trump has fanned himself with a recent retweet, that he might use the rally to issue a pardon to racist criminal former Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
This all comes at a time when the nation is supposed to trying to figure out how to heal from Charlottesville, and how to come together and rise above Nazi and white supremacist hate. Instead Donald Trump appears to be looking to put on a shitshow for the ages, which can only serve to make things worse for him and for America.
