The Russians are supposedly working hard to tamper with our elections. Their goal, according to intelligence agencies, is to sow confusion and disarray. How utterly redundant of them. Don’t they realize their guy Trump has already infused our democracy with perfect chaos? Here in the fourth year of our Kafkaesque nightmare, there is zero demand for imported havoc.
This bizarre dichotomy of home grown versus off-shored chaos reached a daunting and ironic crescendo recently when Trump fired his national intelligence director for, in effect, doing his job. The agency reported that Russia was up to its old election interference tricks in an effort to confuse Americans by blurring fact from fiction and eroding their confidence in democratic institutions. The Donald, of course, has always guarded fact blurring and confidence erosion as part of his exclusive jurisdiction.
For that reason, and because his ego enters apoplexy at the mere suggestion that he can’t get elected without Russia’s help, Trump stirred the chaos pot by firing the intelligence director over the detection of Russian election interference designed to create chaos. Somewhere in that mess is a delicious irony. And a question: Why knock yourself out, Russia, when your candidate is doing such a superb job of turning the country into a cauldron of confusion and obfuscation all by himself?
Intelligence experts say Russia’s main weapons in its disinformation war against us are phony news items and social media messages aimed at attacking many of Trump’s opponents and turning American voters against each other. Really? That’s it? The South Carolina Democratic debate – back when there were seven candidates – resembled an inelegantly choreographed fight scene from West Side Story. As far as social media attacks go, nothing spewing from a Russian bot can be more mean or vitriolic than the daily political discourse among real-life friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. And we have somehow survived all that. So far.
What may be far less survivable, however, is the tsunami of chaos that Donald J. Trump creates – and basks in – on a daily basis. During just the past week, for example, our president managed to produce a level of mass confusion that had to be the envy of every Russian troll farm. During our national panic attack over the $400-a-bottle-Purell-coronavirus, Trump, rather than offering clear and accurate guidance, spouted the obfuscatory gibberish of a Veg-O-Matic salesman.
Trump said the disease will soon disappear, “like a miracle,” probably in April when the weather is warmer. Government health experts said the epidemic is likely to be bad and long.
Trump told a campaign rally in North Carolina that the coronavirus is a plot by Democrats to make him look bad. “This is their new hoax,” he said. Government health experts said this is a “very serious virus” and Americans must prepare to deal with it.
Trump said the virus is no more lethal than the flu and minimized it through branding, calling it the “corona flu”. Government health experts said the coronavirus is far more dangerous than the flu.
Trump said tests for the virus are available for anyone who wants one. Government health experts said there is a serious shortage of tests.
Trump said a coronavirus vaccine will be available any day now. Government health experts said it will take more than a year to develop a vaccine.
In other words, who needs Russian subterfuge to stir chaos and panic in our body politic? Trump has this stuff down pat. Sure, Russia is proficient at creating fake websites and social media posts to deviously spread false information on their political opponents. But Trump has also mastered this niche of deception. Check out this phony Joe Biden site. At first glance, it looks real and official. Then come the pictures and videos of Biden touching, hugging and patting the shoulders of various women and young girls. It also features a collection of the former vice president’s more embarrassing gaffes and his less-than-popular Senate votes. The site is the handiwork of one Patrick Mauldin, who produces video and digital content for Trump’s reelection campaign.
Trump himself sent out a “deep fake” video on Facebook and Twitter purporting to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripping up pages of the president’s State of the Union speech immediately following Trump’s commemoration of the accomplishments of various citizens. Pelosi did, indeed, rip up the speech, but only at its conclusion, not at those poignant moments honoring audience members. The doctored video deliberately altered the context.
Intelligence reports say Russia is attempting to tamper with our actual voting process in hopes of delegitimizing the elections and keep some folks from voting. Again, Trump and his party are way ahead of their foreign counterparts. The GOP leadership in Georgia has purged tens of thousands of voters, mostly people of color for such minor discrepancies as having a misplaced hyphen in a name. In another Republican-governed state, Texas has closed 750 polling places since 2012, predominately in black and Latinx neighborhoods that typically vote Democratic. One man waited seven hours to vote in last week’s Texas Democratic primary election. Many others left long lines without voting. Research by University of Houston political science professors showed that people are less likely to vote if they have to travel further to cast their ballots.
In a recording obtained by the Associated Press, Justin Clark, a senior Trump campaign advisor, spoke candidly about his camp’s efforts to suppress likely Democrats from voting. Here’s what he said: “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places. Let’s start protecting our voters. We know where they are. . .Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”
It is, of course, insidious and vile that a foreign adversary would invade the contours of our sovereign democratic elections in order to sow confusion and suppress voting. Yet, based on all available evidence, the incumbent president and his party are far more effective at accomplishing those goals than their foreign allies. Obviously, that’s why Vladimir Putin wants him reelected. Nobody does chaos better than Donald Trump.