I stood in Kenosha and watched Trump's circus come tumbling down

The 'business owner' he interviewed didn't actually own the business he was stood outside, and the warning he gave was: Elect Joe Biden and the bad things which are happening now will happen

For a piece of political theatre, the backdrop was dramatic: The rubble of a broken city, a distraught resident aside their ruined business, and a self-proclaimed savior president promising deliverance from anarchy.

When Donald Trump visited the city of Kenosha on Tuesday, ostensibly to pay tribute to law enforcement following violent protests, the imagery and the characters were all there.

But what is political theatre without the politics? What impact can it have if the message behind it is so confused that it borders on the absurd?

Trump has made law and order the dominant theme of his reelection campaign in recent weeks (and make no mistake, this was a campaign event). His new direction is based on the belief that images of chaos reigning in American cities will scare people into voting for him.

But the pitch is backwards. The sitting president repeatedly points to (and exaggerates) scenes of destruction caused during protests across the country as a hypothetical doomsday scenario if his opponent is elected. In other words: if Joe Biden is elected, the things that are already happening will happen.

Not only that, it’s a strategy that relies on Biden being unable or unwilling to condemn violent protests, something which he has done with increasing regularity in recent days, and which he has just spent $45 million to tell national and local television audiences across the country for an entire week.

In the new 60-second television spot, the former vice president speaks as images of burned out cars flash and clashes flash across the screen: “I want to make it absolutely clear: rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. And those who do it should be prosecuted.”

Kenosha was Trump’s first real-world test of his law-and-order campaign pivot — one which might see him dropping into grieving cities rife with racial tension to raise the temperature ever higher. And it couldn’t have gone worse.

In the days before his arrival, an uneasy calm had settled over the city. Curfews had been in place for days and they were largely holding. Even before he stepped foot in the city, Trump claimed credit for that peace.

“If I didn’t INSIST on having the National Guard activate and go into Kenosha, Wisconsin, there would be no Kenosha right now,” he tweeted a day ahead of his arrival.

Except it wasn’t Trump who ordered in the National Guard, but Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers. He did so on Monday, a day after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, which sparked the protests. And not only did the president not bring peace to Kenosha, he threatened to derail the peace that had already been achieved. Evers was among several local leaders who called on Trump to not visit the city when it was still grieving, writing in a letter to the president that his presence “will only hinder our healing.”

Trump’s visit inevitably encouraged dozens of his supporters to visit in support, prompting shouting matches between protesters in front of the boarded up shops and businesses. Instead of calling for unity, or attempting to bridge divides, he brushed off questions about systemic racism and just a day earlier he offered something close to a defense of 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, an apparent vigilante who is accused of killing two protesters during one of the worst nights of violence.

Joe Biden’s response to attacks against him on the issue of violent protests has been to argue that Trump is in fact a cause of the chaos — “an incumbent president who makes things worse, not better. An incumbent president who sows chaos rather than providing order,” he said on Monday.

“The violence we’re seeing is in Donald Trump's America. These are not images of some imagined Joe Biden America in the future, these are images of Donald Trump's America today,” he went on.

In Kenosha, Trump seemed to be reminding everyone of these ironies again. And then, after he had left, came the final nudge that brought the entire set, props and all, tumbling down. The business owner whom Trump stood alongside and consoled in what was supposed to be the most memorable photo op of the visit, it turned out, was not the owner of the business at all.

The man standing alongside Trump in the rubble was in fact the previous owner. The actual owner, Tom Gram, had been approached by the White House, but had declined, according to TMJ4 News.

“I think everything he does turns into a circus and I just didn’t want to be involved in it,” he said.

It may be that the Trump campaign can direct enough fear and anger towards racial justice protesters, and create enough of an association between these sporadic outbursts of violence and Biden, to gain ground in this crucial swing state.

To go down that path would surely, in the words of Wisconsin’s governor, hinder the country’s healing.