Trump is using the Kenosha protests to distract from his failures

Editorial: Fear can be a powerful political tool for those unscrupulous enough to use it, and the US president enjoys instilling it in friends, foes and strangers alike

The American leader tours areas affected by civil unrest in the Wisconsin city (AFP/Getty)

Does Donald Trump really believe that the protests in Kenosha – violent and destructive as some plainly were – represent acts of “domestic terror”? Does he really think that the problems in American policing are down to a few “bad apples”? Does he actually think he won the popular vote in 2016 “in a true sense”?

Where President Trump is concerned there is always the temptation to believe that his more outrageous remarks are so bizarre that they must, in fact, be the result of a carefully constructed political strategy, the work of brilliant spin doctors and data analysts who target his too-mad-to-be-real messages at key voters in swing states with uncanny accuracy and devastating effect. Liberals may not like it, but the voters he needs to attract have been scientifically analysed to determine their motivating prejudices; these are then beamed back at them.

Or he could just be saying or tweeting the first thing that enters his elaborately coiffed head, the authentic consequence of the “total honesty” his wife Melania praised in her encomium last week.