Trump and Barr whittle their tools of oppression

As the nation descends into crisis, Donald Trump is failing in every way possible. Trump screwed up the pandemic response so badly, he has left it for dead even as an alarming number of new infections are beginning to surface in Sun Belt states like Arizona, Florida, and Texas. Experts also fear the widespread protests rippling through the nation could fuel spread of the disease.

But at least sickness and death are concepts Trump can vaguely comprehend, even if he possesses absolutely none of the skills required to combat a highly transmissible and lethal virus. The conversation the nation is having in the wake of George Floyd's murder at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers is simply beyond Trump's dim powers of comprehension.

Trump is a top-down, zero-sum simpleton presiding over a country in the midst of a people-powered moment of civic unrest and social change. Americans of varying races, backgrounds, and socioeconomic status are demanding reforms to our justice system that have been left unaddressed since our nation's founding. Rather than engage in that dialogue, Trump's natural instinct is to meet the passionate pleas rising up from the streets with the brute force of autocratic oppression. But the result is a ham-handed photo op that will almost surely become the defining moment of Trump's presidency.

After Attorney General Bill Barr ordered federal officers to forcibly clear peaceably assembled protesters from the park outside the White House, Trump shuffled across the street to hoist an upside-down Bible over his head in front of a church that had been given no warning it would soon become a tool of Trump's propaganda.

The whole scene was as alarming as it was pathetically comical. Trump, assisted by the country's top law enforcement official, physically endangered a throng of civilians exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights so that he could execute a shambolic display of his mental, emotional, and intellectual unfitness to lead.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/6/1951023/-Trump-and-Barr-whittle-their-tools-of-oppression?detail=emaildksc