You can’t disaggregate President Donald Trump’s unnervingly aggressive tweets over the past few days in response to nationwide protests from the context of the cable news coverage he’s been watching. American cities are burning, and Fox News is encouraging Trump to pour fuel on the fire.
Protests are ongoing in cities across the country in response to police violence and racism, sparked by the recent police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. Those overwhelmingly peaceful protests have spurred an eruption of police violence toward protesters and journalists alike, as well as rioting, arson, looting, and vandalism from a small minority acting out of anger or opportunism.
Trump did not give a public address to the nation over the weekend about this crisis, reportedly because he had nothing to say. Instead, he spent that time doing what he usually does: watching Fox News and using Twitter to lash out at the enemies its hosts identify, whether they be Democratic state and local officials supposedly keeping the police from doing their jobs or purported antifa “domestic terrorists.” The network’s hosts and guests are calling for law enforcement to respond with extreme levels of force and the president is parroting their demands for further escalation, risking an even more disastrous conflagration. Continue reading.