I want to take this moment to respond to a current Twitter trend: the question of whether Trump did or did not call the coronavirus a hoax.

When you read the quote and summary on Snopes, you see that Trump made one ambiguous statement, and later made another statement that seemed to negate an interpretation of the first statement.

This is an abuse tactic Trump uses all the time, and I’m not sure it has a name.

It’s an important abuse tactic for us to give name to and discuss. For it to work, Trump is COUNTING on each viewer/listener to polarize around the ambiguous statement, and embrace or ignore the second statement based on our own biases.

But what’s the goal? Well...

Suppose:

-Trump says a fuzzymouthed thing.
- You interpret it one way.
- I interpret it another.
- Later he makes a clarifying statement.
- Each of us either embraces or rejects the clarification.

Net result: when we talk, you and find we utterly disagree. Now we fight.

We fight each other, wasting our own daylight hours. And for every second we fight, that’s TWO seconds we’re not fighting Trump.

He is trying to run out the clock before we notice we’re wasting time fighting each other when we should be fighting him.

This abuse tactic DOES have a name: it’s called Triangulation. And Trump has been using triangulation against us since at least his 2015 campaign. https://outofthefog.website/top-100-trait-blog/2015/11/4/triangulation-divide-conquer

Triangulation’s result - us fighting each other instead of him - brings Trump benefits:

- His supporters support him even more because they feel they are righteously defending a victimized man against unjust attack.

- Those supporters become unwilling to reverse opinion of him.

Meanwhile his detractors (myself included) try harder to pull our loved ones back from falling for his con job. And now the tug-of-war is on.

Meanwhile Trump chortles at how stupid and base we ALL are. Peasants scrabbling in the dirt. Nothing like him and his coiffed friends.

So while you and I lob volleys in person and on social media, we’ve forgotten to demand his accountability for his crimes: tax evasion, rape, fraud, violations of federal and state law... basically everything comedian David Cross lists in this clip:

“Forgotten” is the wrong word. It’s more like the current chaos that Trump manufactured jumps to the top of the accountability to-do list. We still want him tried in courts, forced to pay his debts... we’ll just get to it after he stops manufacturing chaos.

Trump knows this.

And Trump will NEVER stop manufacturing chaos. It’s LITERALLY what’s keeping him out of prison. Our distractability paralyzes us so we can’t/don’t take direct action against him.

I ask you: how do we free ourselves from Trump, the abuser who has trained us to fight each other?

He cannot remain in office. No leader of this country should EVER be allowed to make us fight with each other. And for what? To protect HIS honor?

WHAT honor? He’s an abuser who’s been playing us against each other for FIVE YEARS.

Let’s not waste four more.

A very direct way to hold Trump accountable for abusing us all is to simply NOT vote for him.

Yes, vote: by mail, early, in person... Vote for local and state candidates, vote on questions. Fill out your whole ballot.

But leave the oval next to Trump’s name blank.

I miss when our president wasn’t in our faces every day, demanding that we prove our loyalty to him every second. He’s exhausting. And by now you should realize he will never stop unless we vote him out of office.

So don’t vote for Trump. Let’s take our lives back from him.

#triangulation #TrumpTriangulation