This past week, after the House of Representatives and the Senate had failed to agree on a third round of economic stimulus measures, President Trump announced that he was taking unilateral action to break the standstill.
In orchestrated White House signings, the President announced “executive orders” to reduce the payroll tax, extend unemployment benefits, halt evictions, and give relief on student loans.
This smoke and mirrors stunt, choreographed to make the President appear to be the only adult in the room in Washington D.C., was pretty transparent.
Actually, the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare, cannot be reduced without the approval of Congress. The unemployment benefit relief came with strings attached…i.e. that states would have to pay 25 percent of the cost, which is unlikely. The halt to evictions only applies to properties backed by Federal loans. And the temporary relief on student loans only applies to those involving the Department of Education, not private loans.
So, the signing stunt was a “made for TV” special, attempting to make the President appear “presidential”, and was not a serious attempt at policymaking. Trump obviously wants Democratic leaders to agree to the stimulus proposal approved by Senate Republicans, who have in turn been balking at the more generous proposal adopted by the Democratic-majority House of Representatives.
The very next day, campaigner Trump doubled-down on his P.R. stunt by vowing that, if re-elected, he will make the payroll tax reduction permanent.
Of course, he has no authority as President to do such a thing, and such an action would alienate him (and the Republican Party) from senior citizen voters, who rely on Social Security and Medicare. Every Republican candidate would be voted out of office. So, like a lot of things the President says, it is a lot of hot air and showmanship, exactly what one would expect from an experienced salesman and “reality” TV host.
What is a stunt? A stunt is defined as “an act or feat performed or undertaken chiefly to gain attention or publicity”.
Political stunts are as old as the Republic. They are used periodically by our leaders to push the public opinion needle in the “right” direction in order to force or justify some desired action.
For example, Senator Joseph McCarthy, in a 1950 speech, waved a sheet of paper at a crowd, contending that it held the names of 205 Communists who worked in the State Department. That stunt kicked off a frenzied period called the “Red Scare”, ruined many careers, and made McCarthy a celebrity. Sometimes a provocation is manufactured, like the Gulf of Tonkin “attack” on U.S. naval vessels in 1964. This stunt justified America’s full-scale entry into the Vietnamese civil war. And, the outright fabrication of evidence is sometimes used, as in the 2002 “yellowcake” documentation. This stunt supposedly verified the Weapons of Mass Destruction excuse to invade Iraq that President Bush’s people wanted.
No President has used political stunts as extensively as Donald Trump to move the public opinion needle.
That is because he is a narcissist who loves attention and publicity. He would rather hold a press conference or Tweet what’s on his mind than put in the hard work of making effective policy.
President Trump had a questionable mandate to govern when elected in 2016. He won the Electoral College vote easily, but lost the popular election by 3 million votes, and more than 100 million eligible voters sat on their hands, apparently not liking either candidate. Thus, the new President and his campaign promises were strongly supported by only about one-quarter of eligible voters, meaning that getting anything done in Washington D.C. was going to be an uphill battle.
Trump, who had no experience at government or policymaking, and no inclination to compromise on any of his half-baked ideas, reverted to stunts, Tweets, interviews with Fox News talent, and other forms of public grandstanding to achieve his goals…or, more often, act as though he was achieving his goals.
To some degree, the President has never stopped campaigning to be President, even holding periodic rallies in Trump-friendly cities where he worked hard to keep his political base engaged. These stunts, where he bad-mouths opponents real and imagined in front of hand-picked crowds of MAGA diehards have had… the contrary effect of ensuring that he will have limited success attracting support from Democrats, moderate Republicans, Independents, and folks who are generally too lazy to vote or even read the news.
Trump rallies are stunts that guarantee that he will never broaden his appeal. However, he likes people cheering him and would be doing a lot of them right now if it weren’t public attitudes over Covid-19.
Trump’s vaunted promise to build a “Wall” across the Mexican border is a good example of a prop used to incite his political base. Various photo-op and public grandstanding stunts about keeping out rapists and murderers made for flashy TV, but the substance of his campaign, that Mexico would pay for an impenetrable wall, was bullshit. And, besides, public polling revealed that most Americans thought that wall-building was useless, no matter whose money was spent.
Back in 2018, Trump and his Fox News cronies engineered a provocation stunt which imagined a horde of illegals storming the border, thus justifying a quid pro quo stunt of sending Federal troops to the border to repel the invaders, and thus justifying the payoff stunt of declaring a “National Emergency” which then allowed him the thin excuse to rob FEMA and Department of Defense budgets to build a portion of his wall. In this way, the President was able to defy Congress and the will of the American people and throw red meat to his political base.
Trump continues to brag about the Wall that he is building. However, at this time only about 200 miles of wall have been built, most of which is replacement of existing, deteriorated barriers. The remaining 1,800 miles of border remain un-walled. Illegal immigration, of which the vast proportion occurs via automobile at border crossings and via aircraft at international airports, continues as usual.
The President has periodically done photo-op stunts at the wall to demonstrate how he is protecting American citizens.
The supposed “National Emergency” (the Latin American invasion) has evidently abated to the point that the President has recently felt comfortable in perpetrating another stunt: sending masked, military-garbed Border Patrol agents into American cities to quell protests against police brutality. This action pandered to his political base, which desires a “strongman” President, but further alienated people of color, whom he needs to vote for him in 2020 if he wants to be reelected.
When Puerto Rico was ravaged by Category 5 Hurricane Maria in 2017, President Trump did a photo op stunt in the capital of San Juan where he tossed rolls of paper towels to the crowd of suffering dark-skinned U.S. citizens. He followed that by promising FEMA relief, not delivering on that promise, and then blaming the “crooked” Puerto Rican government for its situation. He bragged that his Administration had done a “tremendous job” helping Puerto Rico recover. Three years later, residents continue to suffer from the damaged water, sewer and electrical systems.
In 2017, the United States rained down 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on an airbase in Syria that was suspected of launching chemical warfare attacks in its civil war. Although this action by the United States made President Trump look decisive and humanitarian, it was later determined to be an expensive and unproductive stunt wherein the Syrian and Russian militaries were warned in advance of the incoming ordinance so that human casualties and aircraft damage would be minimized. Each of the Tomahawk missiles cost one million dollars apiece. The Syrian airbase was back in operation within a few days.
In 2018, President Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore. This political stunt was designed by the White House to publicly claim credit for defusing tensions and forcing the North Koreans to abandon their nuclear weapons testing program. Trump knew that their testing program had already been terminated; the North Koreans required no more testing as they now possessed viable nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the President went on TV, gushed about his great relationship with the North Korean dictator, and bragged that he had engineered a tremendous deal when, in fact, there was no deal.
Shortly thereafter, the North Koreans publicly denied that any agreement was reached, that they would not be giving up their Nuclear Club membership, and that, according to Kim Jong Un, President Trump was a “dotard” (i.e. an old, mentally frail person).
President Trump has, on a number of occasions, orchestrated public relations stunts where, to great fanfare, he has officially abandoned treaties, trade deals, or social programs, announcing that he will replace them with an improved product. And then, he’s not followed through with the “better deal” that he promised. This occurred with Obamacare, with NAFTA, with the Trans Pacific Partnership, and with the Iran nuclear deal. A big made-for-TV splash occurs, then the Administration figures out how hard it is to fashion complex agreements, and then nothing happens.
In 2018, President Trump announced with a lot of hoopla and chest-thumping the imposition of tariffs on some Canadian goods. When asked why he would economically attack a neighbor and ally, Trump denigrated the friendship, “They burned down the White House in the War of 1812”. (Actually, as every grade school student knows, British troops set off that blaze while sacking Washington D.C. in 1814)
A tariff is, essentially, a political stunt that almost always backfires. A government places a tax on imported goods, theoretically punishing the exporting country for selling merchandise at a lower price than the importing country can achieve. The cost of the tariff is passed on to the citizens of the importing country, so it becomes an un-voted-upon tax that burdens citizens.
Donald Trump loves tariffs and has imposed them regularly on nations, friend and foe alike, because he thinks the optics of the stunt make him look like a tough bargainer. He regularly brags about all of the income the United States is making from the tariffs, ignoring the fact that his constituency is paying the freight in those added taxes and in lost business when the opposing countries reciprocate by levying their own tariffs on American goods.
In 2018 the Trump Administration gave American farmers $16 billion in crop subsidies to make up for the business they lost when the United States levied tariffs on Chinese goods. American taxpayer monies funded those subsidies. In addition, American farmers lost markets for their crops.
President Trump could learn a painful lesson about backfiring tariff stunts on November 3, 2020.
It is customary for the Super Bowl winning team to be invited to the White House for a photo op with the President. In 2018, fearing that some of the players might “take a knee” and embarrass him, Trump made a public, pre-emptive strike stunt by dis-inviting the Eagles. Interestingly, none of the Eagles’ players had ever disrespected the flag on the field or planned to disrespect the President. The stunt only served to highlight Trump’s paranoia.
One of Donald Trump’s dubious money-making schemes as a private citizen was Trump University, which was supposed to provide students with valuable knowledge and training to be used in business and real estate development. It was a fraud, and it eventually found its way into a Federal court.
The President, attempting to shift public opinion on the matter (influence the jury?), publicly announced that he “can’t get a fair trial because the judge is Mexican”. This poorly researched P.R. stunt failed miserably when it was revealed that the Federal judge, Gonzalo Curiel, was as American as apple pie, being born and raised in Indiana. Trump lost the case and had to fork over $25 million to scammed students.
Having availed himself of five draft deferments to dodge military service during the Vietnam War, “Cadet Bone Spurs” Trump takes every opportunity to convince Americans how tough he is as a military leader. In October 2019, ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was cornered in a cave by military dogs and Navy Seals. He exploded a suicide vest, killing himself.
President Trump, wanting to puff himself up a bit, bragged that this achievement was “more important than the killing of Osama bin Laden”. And, then in a pile-on stunt, he told the world that the cowardly ISIS leader “went wimpering, crying, and screaming to his death”. It just sounded macho, so Trump said it.
Speaking of bravery, or lack thereof, the demise of Senator John McCain occasioned a childish tit-for-tat stunt by the President. The Senator, an ex-Navy pilot who was shot down in Vietnam and was held hostage and tortured for seven years, and ran as the Republican candidate for President of the United States in 2008, voted against some Trump-supported legislation in 2018. Later that year he died of cancer and the entire Nation mourned…except the President.
Exacting last minute revenge against McCain’s family, the White House flew the American flag at half-mast for one day instead of the normal seven days. Trump’s childish behavior didn’t go over well with the public, or with Congress, or with the Nation’s military veterans, so public opinion forced President Trump to call off his stunt and re-raise the flag for the full seven days of mourning.
Typically, when one his stunts fails, the President blames someone else.
This is particularly true when he’s using social media to enamor himself to his political base. Trump will read something that’s inaccurate, offensive, vulgar, or racist and then re-Tweet that message. In essence, his re-Tweet stunt is an endorsement of the underlying comment…by the President of the United States. If he is later taken to task for the offensive Tweet, he will disavow it by stating innocently, “I didn’t write that.”
(That reminds me of one of my sons who had stashed a marijuana joint in our freezer. When my wife and I discovered it, my son claimed that he…was only holding it for a friend. Not guilty Dad…it’s someone else’s!)
A good example of a disavowed Trump stunt was the economic stimulus check sent to every American taxpayer in 2020. Those checks were signed, in bold, thick ink by Donald Trump himself, who was trying to gain favor with voters in an election year. Democrats cried foul, as a President had never before signed Treasury checks going to citizens. Trump’s response, “It was somebody else’s idea, not mine!”
Of course, at the publicly televised ceremony weeks prior, as the President was signing the economic stimulus bill passed by Congress, he very clearly said, “It would be nice to have my name on those checks.” Evidently, some White House bootlicker was listening.
It is apparent by now (August 2020) that America has totally mismanaged the Covid-19 pandemic. The United States has one-quarter of the worldwide fatalities from the virus while accounting for only four percent of the world’s population. There are third-world countries that have fared better.
Early in the pandemic, while the President was negotiating a trade deal with China, he positively gushed at China’s early efforts on the pandemic, the Chinese government’s honesty and transparency, and the Chinese scientific cooperation with American epidemiologists. Trump claimed that he and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping had a great relationship.
As the pandemic gained speed, and prospects of a great trade deal fell flat, President Trump realized that the pandemic was going to be a political problem in the United States and that he was going to need someone to blame.
At about that time, as the carnage in America spiked, the President started referring to Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus”, “Kung Flu”, and other racist terms intended to plant the blame squarely on China, because the novel coronavirus originated there. Stories were planted, and then nurtured, that Covid-19 was a bioweapon engineered in a Chinese laboratory or, alternatively, that reckless Chinese scientists had accidentally released it into the Wuhan community.
The President’s buddy, Xi Jinping, was now a pariah.
This P.R. stunt has been effective in misdirecting the anger of many Americans. However, since the United States still must conduct business with the world’s second most powerful country, a party who couldn’t strike back needed to take the fall for the catastrophe. One more stunt was required: to publicly blame the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) for America’s troubles.
To great fanfare, President Trump announced that he was pulling American funding from the international public health body. The perpetrator had been found and justice had been accomplished. “WHO did it!” Case closed.
Except…that it is documented that the W.H.O. alerted the White House in January about the coming plague, and Trump ignored the warning. As he did in February and half of March. He refused to hear about a pandemic that could ruin “his” economy and possible trade deals in an election year.
When it was evident that the pandemic could become a political calamity for him, the President started conducting Coronavirus Task Force briefings, on TV. These were public relations stunts, wherein experts would provide updates and advice on public health protection measures, giving the briefings the sheen of authenticity.
However, the podium belonged to the President who regularly opined a more optimistic outlook than his epidemiologists, scoffed at mortality projections, promised Federal assistance that wasn’t forthcoming, bad-mouthed Blue state governors who were shouting alarms, and undermined Task Force recommendations regarding closing/re-opening the economy and the wearing of protective face masks.
President Trump, who consistently called the pandemic “just the flu”, “overblown”, a “hoax”, and something that would “go away by April”, next turned to the “Doctor” Trump stunts: publicly shilling a malaria drug (Hydroxychloroquine) to cure Covid-19 and publicly hypothesizing that the ingestion of chlorine bleach might halt viral infection within the body.
As a way of underlining his disbelief as to the seriousness of the pandemic, President Trump declared that he wouldn’t wear a protective mask…and has continued to ignore his Task Force’s recommendation to the rest of America as we approach mid-August.
When historians look back on this debacle decades from now, they may determine that this political stunt (lack of Presidential leadership) was the most influential factor in causing many Americans to not take the pandemic seriously.
Not wanting the pandemic to ruin the American economy (in an election year), President Trump ceaselessly badgered state governors to re-open their economies despite the warnings of his own Task Force that it would cause new spikes in infection. He threatened governors with loss of Federal funds if they didn’t re-open promptly, and similarly threatened governors who wouldn’t rescind limits on in-church attendance. Each empty threat stunt was announced at a press conference to give it the maximum public relations value.
When challenged on his ability to force governors to do these things, Trump responded in a press conference, “When somebody’s the President of the United States, the authority is total.” This public relations stunt went over poorly with governors and members of Congress, particularly when Trump later stated that he “took no responsibility” for the lame Federal response to the pandemic.
In the midst of infection spikes in the Midwest, with public gatherings of more than ten people banned in most states, President Trump held a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bragging beforehand that he’d received hundreds of thousands of requests for seats, the actual crowd in the covered arena was 7,000 cheering, yelling MAGA supporters, almost all not wearing face masks.
This stunt, which was basically an “in-your-face” insult to his own Coronavirus Task Force meant to embolden his political base, included the President telling the crowd that as Covid-19 infections had risen he’d “told my people to slow down the testing”.
Herman Cain, a Black entrepreneur who briefly ran in the Republican primary against Trump in 2016 and later endorsed him, was among the cheering, mask-less well-wishers in Tulsa. Shortly after the rally, Cain tested positive for Covid-19, was hospitalized, and later died. The Tulsa rally was a Trump stunt that killed.
As the Covid-19 pandemic re-energized in the Summer, the Trump Administration got desperate in trying to “control the narrative”; i.e. not Trump’s fault, China did it, the W.H.O. fucked up, “it will just go away”, “the cure can’t be worse than the problem”,etc.
In mid-July, Peter Navarro, a top White House trade advisor, wrote an op-ed that attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top epidemiologist, for giving President Trump bad advice on the pandemic. This orchestrated stunt, which was a crude attempt by the President to silence Dr. Fauci and could be disavowed (“I don’t know why Peter said those things. Dr. Fauci and I get along great.”), went over with the American public like a fart in church. Dr. Fauci is revered by most citizens as the most trusted voice in the midst of the public health catastrophe.
Still trying to act like a medical expert, President Trump, who had earlier touted Hydroxychloroquine and Chlorox, used the Task Force podium to publicly applaud British vaccine developers that are receiving U.S. funding. These scientists, the President noted, are the same folks who created “the AIDS vaccine”. That stunt press conference, which was supposed to reinforce Trump’s scientific bonafides, was a failure, as it was quickly pointed out that an AIDS vaccine has never been developed.
It is mid-August 2020, and the American death toll from Covid-19 is around 170,000 souls, with that total currently increasing by about 1,000 per day. A new projection, from a source often used by the Trump Administration, postulates almost 300,000 deaths by the end of the year.
All of Donald Trump’s stunts to misdirect attention, minimize the threat, plant seeds of doubt about “expert” advice, and advocate re-opening of the economy have ensured that the calamity will be worse than it would have been if early warnings from the W.H.O. and C.D.C. would have been heeded and sound public health measures adopted.
As a result of the President’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, he is behind Joe Biden in all of the polls (as of mid-August). He thinks massive mail-in voting will be detrimental to his re-election chances in November.
Never one to learn from past mistakes, the President is now preparing for the granddaddy of all stunts…to cut the legs off of the Postal Service so that it cannot quickly process mail (hence mail-in ballots) come November. Mail delivery is already slowing due to cost-cutting measures recently implemented. Ballots mailed in time, but not delivered by the Postal Service until after the election, will not be counted. Another Administration bootlicker has been listening to the Boss.
The new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a big Trump campaign contributor, was not technically appointed by the President, so Trump can disavow any malfeasance or skullduggery perpetrated by DeJoy. However, the Board members of the postal commission that hired DeJoy are all appointed by Donald Trump.
When the shit comes down in November, The Stuntman will innocently announce, “I didn’t hire the guy. In fact, I hardly know him. I can’t say that I ever met him.”
UPDATE: One guy the President did hire is Dr. Scott Atlas. He is the new White House health advisor, brought on board because Drs. Fauci and Birx, actual public health experts who’ve been leading the Coronavirus Task Force, have failed to kow-tow to Mr. Trump’s demands to downplay the pandemic.
Dr. Atlas is a RADIOLOGIST, and a very conservative one, who regularly opines on stuff that he knows nothing about on Fox News. Hiring a radiologist (a guy who reads xrays) to provide the Nation with medical advice on Covid-19 would be like relying on Bob Einstein (i.e. Super Dave Osborn) to explain the Theory of Relativity. Dr. Atlas probably knows more about bodybuilding than the science of viral infections and epidemics.
It’s another incredibly stupid stunt by the President of the United States, who is starting to grasp for straws. The only people who fall for this one are the idiots who have already imbibed the MAGA Kool Aid.