Again Trump works his misdirection magic, this time with Gaza distraction, by Hal M. Brown

Just don't look too closely at Kash Patel who is about to turn the FBI in Trump's personal Gestapo.

Trump worked his David Copperfield distraction beautifully yesterday when he suggested that the United States should take over Gaza, using the military if necessary. A good magician sometimes uses distraction and misdirection to pull off an illusion. Everybody, look here while I'm doing this here.

He's doing the same thing with his DEI purges and his scrubbing certain words from government websites. He’s doing it with his nominations to distract from the worst of the worst.

On the website word scrubbing, he even had Rachel Maddow wasting time in her introduction about government websites scrubbing words with the story of sprinter Tyson Gay whose name was changed automatically to homosexual in some media in an effort not to be offensive. This led me to wonder if there were book reviews which changed the names of novelists Gay Talese, or worse, Gay Courter, but then that's the way my mind wanders since Gay Courter has been a friend since she was my childhood neighbor. Her name would be Homosexual Courter.

See, Trump's lunacy has even led my mind to be misdirected.

Rachel wasted time with her lead story. We couldn't stand her smiling as she told her story. We turned off her show, and watched some streaming video. Then we turned MSNBC back on to watch Lawrence O'Donnell soberly address the cuts to USAID. He talked about how people were dieing because of this. That is one of the issues the media should be addressing. Website scrubbing is a comparatively minor story.

There are two major stories about what Trump is doing. One is, obviously, about what Trump is doing to destroy democracy and how he is becoming a dictator. The other is about how the media is being taken in by his misdirection.

Not every outlet is taken in all of the time. As I write this Mika Brezinski is talking about how Pete Marocco was putting in charge of the USAID. He was a participant in the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol.

Look this way: Greenland, the Panama Canal, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Krist Noem, even Leon, uh, Elon Musk. Pay attention to Trump flubbing Musk's name. I think Trump does this Leon thing on purpose so it makes the news.

Robert Hubbell has a good list (here) of all the things Trump is doing which can distract us from his ultimate goal.

Just don't look too closely at Kash Patel who is about to turn the FBI in Trump's personal Gestapo.

Musk's machinations are marvelous misdirections too. Consider:

With a cadre of engineers as young as 19 years old, and with the encouragement of Trump, Musk has demanded and been given access to sensitive government databases and the Treasury Department’s payment system with an unprecedented series of bureaucratic maneuvers. NBC News

Put one 19 year old in a position like this and that will be a major part of the story. Don’t look too closely at the ramifications of what Musk is able to do at Treasury.

Most importantly, just don't look too closely at Kash Patel who is about to turn the FBI in Trump's personal Gestapo.

The media should explain that Trump is like Hitler in many ways, but unlike him because he doesn't care about initiating a thousand year reich. He wants to reign over his personal reich (German for realm or empire) for as long as he lives. After that he doesn’t care what happens.

I'd like to see someone develop and publicize a checklist from both Project 2025 and the things Hitler did in the 1930's and call it "Steps On The Road To An American Dictorship" and as more and more of the steps are attempted and then accomplish the list should be republished.

There could be a countdown clock similar to the Doomsday Clock. It is a symbol that represents the estimated likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe, in the opinion of the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. As of 2025 the most recent clock shows us to be slightly less than 1½ minutes from midnight due to the continuing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Middle Eastern crisis, increased nuclear proliferation, effects of climate change, biological threats, and advancing technologies. I think that it needs to be updated in light of what Trump has done in the last few weeks.

The media needs to prioritize. Everything from the blowback caused by Trump's tarrif threats to the price of eggs, including stories about Waffle House raising breakfast prices, should be covered. These are like straws added to the camel's back. Eventually they will break Trump's back. But until that happens, more and more of the 50% of Amercians who still approve of Trump need decide that they really don't want to live in a cruel dictatorship which has it's own Gestapo.

They need to be reminded of the Martin Niemöller poem “First They Came:”

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

Update: 4 explanations for Trump’s shocking Gaza proposal (Washington Post, subscription) - the first is exactly what I am saying:

1. It’s a distraction

An often-overwrought criticism of the media is that it succumbs to Trump’s “distractions” — the wild ideas he floats that are intended to avert journalists’ and the public’s gaze from other, more prosaic and boring but more legitimate controversies.

But just because that theory has been overwrought doesn’t mean it’s not a real strategy. And there’s no question that Trump, more than ever, is “flooding the zone” with bold (and often legally dubious) actions that challenge everyone to keep up.

“It’s working,” former Trump White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon told my colleagues late last month. “It’s just stunning to me what they’re doing, and it’s not getting covered because it’s too much. They’re overwhelming the system.”

The other three are that it’s a negotiating ploy, that he’s leaning into the madman theory even more, and his sudden imperialist streak is very real.

Overly Dramatic Afterthought:

I liken what Trump is doing to what you see in movies where criminals or terrorists use a celebration like the Fourth of July or a Superbowl game to pull off a bank robbery or an attack elsewhere in the city.

Addendum:

I would agrue that Heather “Digby” Parton’s featured column about Trump’s Gaza proposal (or threat) in Salon today is an example of how Trump misdirects and distracts. I wish she had addressed this in what she wrote.

Just look at four of the five trending stories on RawStory.

Here's HuffPost:

Afternoon:

I suggest that the article about the second judge putting a hold on the birthright citizen ban is also an important a story.

I post my Substacks (formerly blogs) on several platforms. They are on Substack where, if you want to submit your email, you can be notified of all new blog posts. They are on HalBrown.org. They are also on Stressline.org I also post them on Medium because this enables them to be easily found on internet searches