Trump Escalates the Crisis on Purpose - Analysis in "Der Stern"

By Ellygator  From DailyKos

I regularly read the German magazine “Der Stern” on my phone app, and this morning’s read terrified me enough to share it here. The blog is a mix of direct translation and paraphrase. I’ve written this rather hurriedly and English is not my first language, so please excuse any errors.

You can read the original German article by Dieter Hoss here: www.stern.de/…

“The USA is currently living through one of the greatest crises in its history. However, the president does little to intervene. On the contrary: Donald Trump is fanning the flames. Experts are now debating weather he is escalating the situation on purpose  — in order to secure power in November

“The USA is currently living through one of the greatest crises in its history. However, the president does little to intervene. On the contrary: Donald Trump is fanning the flames. Experts are now debating weather he is escalating the situation on purpose  — in order to secure power in November.

The USA could not be in much worse shape than they are, a few months away from the next presidential election on November 3rd. The Corona crisis is raging out of control, the economy has hit rock bottom with millions of people out of work, the country is in turmoil with (sometimes violent) demonstrations against racism in the larger cities. The president appears mostly inactive, but more aggressive and divisive than ever. Has he already given up on the November election?

Probably not. Experts in the States as well as abroad are now debating whether the lack of crisis management has a sinister purpose: to throw the country into such a state of chaos that there cannot possibly be a transition of power in the fall.

There are 4 indicators that this may indeed be the case.

1. The Corona virus is given free reign

The first wave of infections has already shown that Trump has failed as a crisis manager. Now he has transitioned to simply denying the pandemic. He maintains on Twitter that the case numbers of new infections would be lower if there simply was less testing. This seems to be a policy of wilful ignorance, but it means the president is fine with the rise in new infections and deaths.

When interviewed during the ZDF Talkshow “Markus Lanz” the German lawyer and financial expert Sandra Navidi, a German citizen living in New York, stated: “He says people should got to election rallies, fill churches, go to sporting events, open the schools — even or especially in disease hot spots.”

He refuses to wear masks and doesn’t want to see anyone around him wear one, to the point where Secret Service members were quarantined as a precaution after the Tulsa rally. If this continues the USA will head for a medical catastrophe.

2. Political opponents are painted as radicals

Since the beginning of his presidency Trump has pushed the envelope of what is acceptable speech in public, but now his rhetoric has become even more extreme, even hysterical. Some pundits see this as a sign that he is panicking, but he may simply be making the point to his followers that it is unthinkable to surrender the country to his political enemies and that it has to be prevented — perhaps at any cost.

Recently he has begun to refer to Democrats with the constant epithet of “radical”. During his Tulsa speech he blamed the demonstrations in Seattle and the declaration of an “autonomous zone” on the opposition party. He also announced that he did not want to deescalate the conflict. He’d rather have things go on for a little longer so everyone could see what radical democrats were prepared to inflict on the country.

He’s declared demonstrators who work for the removal of confederate statues to be terrorists and has imposed heavy sentences on acts of so-called “vandalism”. The real challenge to his followers can be read clearly: “Do you really want to surrender your country to the radical Left and to terrorists?”

3. There is no attempt to deescalate the debate about racism

Trump calls the participants in the anti-racism protests “arsonists, anarchists and looters”. He has shown no willingness to intervene and calm the situation, not even symbolically. When the suggestion came up to rename several military bases he tweeted that he would not even think about rebranding these “sacred places”.

He sees the demonstrators as mere troublemakers and opposes them by invoking “law and order”. This became apparent when he had peaceful demonstrators forcibly removed by police for a photo op in front of a church near the White House, a decision that even some of his followers criticized.

However, he does not seem to be in the mood to follow this hard-line approach consistently. After he declared that he would forego a weekend trip to his golf club in New Jersey to impose law and order in Washington, he still departed for his club in Sterling, VA, on Saturday.

4. Confidence in the election and vote by mail is systematically undermined

USA expert Braml warned in an interview with “Watson” that Trump is lighting a fuse when he discredits vote by mail which is essential during a pandemic. Lawrence Douglas adds that vote by mail would benefit the Democrats and therefore needs to be attacked. Trump and his republican followers paint it as a method for voter fraud, which has no basis in actuality, at least not to the point where it could call the result of an entire election into doubt.

Still, Trump and other republicans have gone to court to prohibit vote by mail and the president even declared that if they didn’t win these lawsuits it would jeopardize the election.

According to Douglas Trump is already laying the foundation to be able to dispute the election results in November, and Navidi even believes that he may try and suspend the election entirely. She thinks that the current rise in Corona infections which would prevent people from voting would provide the perfect excuse to stall the process. Taken together with gerrymandering and the closure of voting locations that are already happening some voters in recent elections had to queue for up to 8 hours and it is becoming ever harder for Black and Latino citizens to cast their votes.

The USA have no process for a non-peaceful transition of power

Braml draws this conclusion from Trump’s unwillingness to help, lead or de-escalate: the more the situation spins out of control the better he can gloss over his botched crisis management and present himself as the commander in chief who imposes law and order. At the same times he keeps conspiracy theories alive that the “deep state” is trying to get rid of him. During the impeachment he already appealed to his most loyal followers to start a civil war, and he would probably do the same if he lost the election.

Lawrence Douglas points out that there is no process in US law that regulates a disputed transition of power. If two candidates declared themselves president it might boil down to the military to decide and declare who they’d accept as commander in chief.

We will see in November if Trump is prepared to plunge the country into an existential crisis in a grab for power.

Experts are also troubled by his statements that he could see people begging him to stay in power even after a second term. A third presidential term is not sanctioned by the US constitution.”

End of Article

This is how people in Germany are viewing the current situation. I had hoped that the current state of leaderless crisis is a testament to Trump’s ineptness and a sign that he is losing control, but after reading this analysis I am truly terrified.

I now believe there is method to this madness and I am not sure how we can stop the orchestrated descent into the perfect storm to sweep away our democracy.