Trump did not like it when Twitter fact checked one of his tweets in which he gave false information about mail-in voting. He responded to being fact checked by issuing an Executive Order targeting social media platforms. To give you a taste, it includes this snippet:
The Executive Order is more of what Trump has been doing for three years: Try to fire up the base. Get the fighters fighting. Flex his muscles. Show he’s “tough.”
Stanford Law professor Nathaniel Persily’s said this about Trump’s war with Twitter:
The Executive Order basically says: “You better not mess with me or I’ll come after you.” From Yale law professor Jack Balkin:
The order—while mostly smoke and mirrors—is clearly an authoritarian move designed to fire up his base.
An order like this one taps into his bases’s resentment and feelings of victimization on Twitter and elsewhere.
You see, they think they’re the victims of massive unfairness. They think social media is ‘biased’ against them. In this poll, 3 out of 5 Republicans believed that social media was biased against them.
If Twitter fact-checks Trump, they don’t think it’s because Trump is lying. They think it’s because Trump is being unfairly targeted:
When we disagree with Trump and his supporters—when we laugh off conspiracy theories, or roll our eyes at the lies—they think it’s because we’re biased and hate them.
Recall that one of the defenses of Trump at his impeachment trial was that the Democrats hate Trump.
One benefit to Trump when does stuff like this: It feeds the myth that he is invincible and really is a strongman. People go into “what if” spins, which demoralizes his opponents, and persuades his followers that he really is invincible.
One way Trump deals with the pandemic is to persuade his base that liberals are a greater danger. The Executive Order helps with this: He is going to battle against the “real” danger: Liberals who want to destroy them.
Of course, he’s also dealing with the pandemic by immunizing his base against the truth, like this:
One of his election strategies is to claim that his loss was because of fraud:
If he doesn’t keep his base fired up and immune to the truth, they might start questioning his handling of the pandemic, learn that he screwed up his response, and stay home in November.
The Executive Order was authoritarian enough to enrage all of us, which the base sees as attacking them personally, which then fires them up and gets them to vote. He has to hold on to the support he has.
The hitch is that once more, he is flexing his authoritarian muscles, so the rest of us also know we must vote. Which reminds me. You’ve all taken steps to get your absentee ballots, right? (30 states including Washington D.C. allow no-excuse absentee voting).
Basically Trump is using the “Get the fighters fighting and keep them fighting,” method of governing and campaigning. Fascism needs an enemy. Trump prefers to fight an invented enemy. An invented enemy can’t really hurt him.
He also prefers to deal with an invented crisis, such as: Twitter is Targeting ‘Conservatives.’ An invented crises is easier to manage and can’t get out of hand, like, say, a virus.
Trump needs to fire up his base, because if he loses any support at this point, it will be harder to claim that he lost because of fraud. He wants to claim fraud because that way he can keep the show going even after he loses.
He wants to claim fraud to keep himself relevant. Then in 2021 he can start Trump Cable TV or something like that and keep the show going.
Because it’s all about the show.
He makes up the story, and forces us to play our parts.
