A Complete Analysis Of Trump’s 183rd Unpresidented Week As POTUS

With 100 days left until the election, Trump is unleashing authoritarian cruelty, embracing his racism, and showcasing callous indifference to COVID-19.
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by: Ahmed Baba on July 26, 2020

President Donald Trump is introduced to speak to U.S. military troops at Naval Air Station Sigonella, Saturday, May 27, 2017, in Sigonella, Italy. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump is introduced to speak to U.S. military troops at Naval Air Station Sigonella, Saturday, May 27, 2017, in Sigonella, Italy. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Trump’s first major typo after winning the election was spelling Unprecedented incorrectly. He infamously tweeted “Unpresidented.” This typo is emblematic of his administration: An impulsive, frantically thrown together group of characters with virtually no oversight. After Trump was sworn in, I started writing the weekly “Unpresidented” column, analyzing every week of his presidency. This is week 183.

A country’s level of greatness should not be based on their GDP, but by how well they treat the most vulnerable among them. It should be based on how they treat the poor, sick, and marginalized. It should be based on how they treat protestors demanding equality or journalists seeking to expose corruption. Is the America we see today living up to its alleged greatness? No. At times we have risen to our promised ideals, but for most of our history, we have not. President Trump is tapping into the worst impulses we’ve seen embodied during the darkest moments of American history. We can overcome this, but first, we have to accurately depict where we are.

Nearly 150,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. About 30 million Americans are on unemployment insurance and those enhanced benefits are expiring. Over 20 million Americans could face eviction by October and the federal moratorium on evictions is expiring. At least 5 million Americans have reportedly lost health insurance during the pandemic. In spite of all this, Senate Republicans have yet to pass another coronavirus relief bill to help Americans. Instead, they went home for the weekend, showcasing their callous indifference. Americans are already struggling and grieving loved ones, the last thing they need is added anxiety and their future made more uncertain due to Senate inaction.

In Portland, we have a full-blown authoritarian deployment of DHS officers operating as Trump’s personal police force and violating the rights of Americans. These federal police forces have beaten veterans peacefully assembling and assaulting moms and grandmas with chemical agents. While there have been some causing unrest, what is purporting to be a DHS operation to quell that violence appears to only be exacerbating violence.

We’ve seen excessive use of force all over the US, and now it seems the Trump Administration is expanding its efforts. President Trump, Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, and Attorney General William Barr held an event announcing hundreds of federal officers being deployed to Chicago to tackle crime there. Trump is now expanding beyond countering protests, and appears to just be sending his forces anywhere he pleases. While the Trump Administration has tried to differentiate what’s happening in Portland from their announced deployments in Chicago, I’ll believe it when I see it.

These authoritarian displays are simply campaign fodder for a president who is down by double digits in most polls, and down considerably in must-win swings states. Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser on the Trump Campaign, sent out a video of footage from Portland and said that this is what Joe Biden’s America will look like. Tens of thousands of Twitter users replied with the obvious fact this is literally Trump’s America.

I’ll tell you one thing, unleashing federal officers on cities to create scenes of chaos in Trump’s America that you and your campaign then use to warn of what Joe Biden’s America will look like is a Nathan For You-level campaign con (if you haven’t seen the Comedy Central show Nathan For You, it’s about an awkward guy who gives small businesses wild ideas to help promote their brands – it’s hilarious).

Meanwhile, in Louisville, we saw right-wing militiamen firing shots at Black militiamen. This is another reason the secret police in Portland are dangerous. Right-wing militiamen could easily impersonate unmarked federal officers and kidnap people in unmarked cars. If you look at these guys in Louisville, it would be hard to tell they aren’t like those officers in Portland.

There were also images over the weekend from Seatle where a nurse was sprayed to the face by officers brutally suppressing a protest. There comes a time when an individual’s basic human decency should override authority. Some of the cruelest acts in history were people “just following orders.” How can these officers keep carrying out these acts?

In other authoritarian news, Sean Hannity opened up his Fox News show ahead of an interview he had with President Trump by calling for U.S. Attorney John Durham, in no uncertain terms, to indict Obama officials for imaginary charges in their Obamagate conspiracy theory. This is pure authoritarian lunacy being spread to millions of people. There were false charges like this levied throughout the week from Trump surrogates and Trump himself, of course, has baselessly accused both Obama and Biden of treason.

While Trump and his cronies continued to make baseless claims about Obama and Biden, their own corruption was exposed. Judge Hellerstein ruled that Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen can be released from jail and his re-imprisonment was an act of retaliation from the DOJ in an attempt to thwart the release of his book. That’s a big deal. It wasn’t a report or allegation, it was a ruling, a declaration that Cohen was targeted by the US Government for opposition to Trump personally.

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Speaking of authoritarian musings, President Trump’s coronavirus briefings made a return. President Trump stayed relatively calm during the short briefings like a man who is 15 points down in the polls and scared for his political life. Luckily, this did not garner him the “new tone” headlines he was reaching for because the briefings were still packed with lies and exaggerations.

President Trump repeatedly oversold the impact of his half-baked China travel ban, which still allowed 400,000 people to flow in amid COVID-19 before he did the “ban,” and 40,000 people afterward. Meanwhile, people with COVID-19 flowed in from Europe and he didn’t do sufficient testing or contact tracing.

In one briefing, President Trump announced he’s canceling the in-person component of the GOP convention in Jacksonville, Florida. This came as he simultaneously called for schools to reopen and the CDC changed their guidelines to urge school reopenings as well.

There was a topic noticeably missing from the briefings. There was not a single question about the Russian Bounties on American troops all week, even after Trump threw everyone a layup by talking about his phone call with Putin. Every day members of the media don’t ask Trump about the Russian bounties, the Trump Administration succeeds in their goal of ignoring it and not facing pressure to take retaliatory measures.

Every briefing after COVID-19 questions, they need to hit him on his use of a personal police force and Russia. It appears the White House strategy is to just hope we forget the Russian bounties happened. It’s been a full month since the first report about this from The New York Times, and the White House has reportedly known about the intelligence concerning this operation since early 2019.

The primary factor of newsworthiness shouldn’t be whether the information is “new.” It should be heavily weighted by the importance of the story itself. I understand journalists are pushed to get new info from Trump, but they can use their judgment to weigh what’s most important to ask him. Russia is an increasingly important topic with the election nearing and with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) wittingly basing his entire investigation into the Bidens on Russian disinformation. During impeachment, Fiona Hill straight-up told the GOP not to promote “falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.” They didn’t listen.

Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s briefings continued as well, and she’s been increasingly combative with reporters and has moved on from multiple questions she doesn’t like. And of course, we have the usual lying. McEnany defended Trump’s opposition to the removal of Confederate statues with misleading deflections.

President Trump’s new defense of the Confederate flag comes in the form of him drawing a false equivalence between the flag and Black Lives Matter (BLM). The Confederacy represented a treasonous fight to enslave Black people. BLM represents a fight for equal rights for Black people. Trump keeps depicting BLM as anti-white and it’s not.

Now, there’s another topic I want to dedicate some time to and it’s the dangerous embrace of QAnon by the Republican Party. This week, Fox News and OANN directly praised QAnon, which is a conspiracy theory that the FBI regards as a terrorist threat. President Trump has retweeted QAnon accounts and there are at least 11 GOP candidates who are open QAnon supporters.  This just has to stop. They’re giving credence to complete and utter lunatics. This week, we published an article from Greg Fish headlined “The GOP Is Now The Party Of QAnon,” and it is becoming more true by the day.

How could I end this week’s column without mentioning President Trump’s now infamously hilarious “person woman man camera TV” moment? I waited for Sarah Cooper’s version of this like a kid waiting for a new movie release. Every single time Trump tries to convince people he is not cognitively impaired, all he does if raise further suspicion that he is. It was a wild interview, but there was another noteworthy interview moment this week.

In a complete softball interview with Barstool Sports, President Trump mused about how great his life was before he became president. President Trump said: “The best day in my life, in terms of business and life and everything, was the day before I announced I‘m running for President. Everything was good.” Our lives were better before he became president too. He could save himself and us the trouble by just resigning, but it appears in 100 days, we’ll have to do that job ourselves.

There was another revealing Trump quote from that interview: “Somebody said ‘who’s the toughest in the world to deal with? Is it Russia? is it China? Could it be North Korea?’ I said no the toughest is the United States.”  Trump then complained about Democratic cities. President Trump clearly sees his fellow Americans as enemies. That is why he sees no problem unleashing violent federal officers in Democratic cities or baselessly accusing Democrats of treason, because he doesn’t see them as “his people.” If you didn’t vote for Trump, he sees you as less American. That, within itself, makes him unfit to lead this nation.

Let’s dive into another Unpresidented week.

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Trump’s Embrace Of Fascism

Day 1,278: Monday, July 20

Monday’s top stories:

Coronavirus Surging

Day 1,279: Tuesday, July 21

President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence and members of the White House COVID-19 Coronavirus task force – – Thursday, April 16, 2020. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence and members of the White House COVID-19 Coronavirus task force – – Thursday, April 16, 2020. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

Tuesday’s top stories:

An Authoritarian Partnership

Day 1,280: Wednesday, July 22

President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr – February 14, 2019 (Department of Justice)

President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr – February 14, 2019 (Department of Justice)

Wednesday’s top stories:

Judge Rules DOJ “Retaliation” Against Cohen

Day 1,281: Thursday, July 23

Michael Cohen and Donald Trump (AP)

Michael Cohen and Donald Trump (AP)

Thursday’s top stories:

Judge Rules DOJ “Retaliation” Against Cohen

Day 1,282: Friday, July 24

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., center, before the start of a meeting with House and Senate Leadership in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., center, before the start of a meeting with House and Senate Leadership in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Friday’s top stories:

Rantt Media and ZipRecruiter


Unpresidented // America / Authoritarianism / Coronavirus / Donald Trump / Portland
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by: Ahmed Baba

Ahmed Baba is the Co-Founder and President of Rantt. Writer of Unpresidented, Ahmed documented and analyzed every day of the Trump presidency. He's also a columnist at The Independent and his work has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, The New York Post, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Blavity, Newsweek, The Telegraph, and more. He can be reached at [email protected] or found on Twitter @AhmedBaba_.

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