By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – So, to make America great again, we’re all supposed to be terrified of 75-year-old unarmed men.

This is particularly true if they fall easily and bleed a lot.

That’s the latest theory President Donald Trump has advanced.

He has accused Martin Gugino, the old man Buffalo police pushed to the ground and sent to the hospital, of being a terrorist. There’s not a single piece of evidence to support the president’s charge.

Gugino apparently is a staunch Catholic who believes in social justice. He’s an activist who doesn’t seem to be a fan of the president’s, but there are a lot of Americans, the polls tell us, in that category now.

Trump based his smear of Gugino on something he saw on OANN, which has become his preferred news source now that even the softball coverage he gets on Fox News wounds his tender sensibilities. The reporter who suggested that Gugino might be a provocateur long has trafficked in conspiracy theories and once worked for Sputnik, the news agency established by the Russian government.

Really.

The Russian government.

A development such as this wouldn’t be believable in a bad spy novel, but it seems like it’s just another day at the office in Donald Trump’s America.

There is so much to unpack in this latest bit of Trumpian insanity.

Let’s start with the question of gullibility.

Some explain Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency by arguing that he is some sort of Queens-born Svengali, a con man extraordinaire who can sell his credulous base almost anything.

But there may be another way to look at it.

It’s entirely possible that the reason this president has such a powerful connection with the people who support him is that he’s every bit as gullible as they are.

That he will swallow any bit of nonsense, however ridiculous, if it flatters his ego, appears to advance his personal interests, or attempts to explain away his deficiencies or failures.

Such an interpretation would make it easier to understand why he would see a frail, 75-year-old unarmed man as a grave threat to a phalanx of heavily armed and armored police officers. It also might explain why this self-proclaimed business wizard and master deal maker has declared bankruptcy at least six times.

When it suits his purposes, this president is perfectly capable of believing his own con.

But let’s also talk about the issue of fear.

We’re now all supposed to be frightened to death of peaceful protesters exercising rights guaranteed to them in the very U.S. Constitution Donald Trump took an oath to uphold and defend.

But the thought of those protestors gathering seems to shake this president right down to his loafers. That’s why, when they showed up at the White House after he unwisely escalated the controversy, the commander-in-chief scurried to the bunker for safety.

(It’s fun to imagine the alarms that rang through the White House at that moment: “Good Lord! They’re outside and they’re wearing Birkenstocks! Take cover!”)

The reason Donald Trump likes to keep Americans scared all the time is that frightened people can’t think straight.

If they were thinking straight, they might realize he hasn’t delivered on a single campaign promise he made.

There is no wall along our southern border and there’s not likely to be one ever. He hasn’t restored jobs to the industrial sector or prosperity to rural America. He hasn’t reduced the cost of health care in America or made it more readily available.

Even the triumphs Trump touts have been illusory. The economic growth he crowed about prior to the pandemic was both slower and less robust during Trump’s first three years in office than in Barack Obama’s last three.

Worse, it was heavily weighted toward the top rungs of the economic ladder. The middle-class Trump swore to defend, the numbers showed, kept sliding ever closer to poverty.

The pandemic hastened that trend, but it didn’t create it.

All this means is that the people who put Donald Trump in office have little to show for the faith they placed in him.

No wonder he’s tweeting that he and they ought to be scared witless by an unarmed frail old man.

It’s either the only card he’s got to play.

Or he really is that frightened.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

The City-County Observer posted this article without bias, editing or opinion. Anyone who would like to respond to Mr. Krull pointed Commentary will post it in the City-County Observer without bias, opinion, or editing.