The "Mad Emperor" on his way to his photo op

"On an early summer evening... Donald Trump walked out of the White House, where he’d been hiding in a bunker. Military police had just fired teargas and flash grenades at peaceful protesters to clear his path, so that he could wave a Bible in front of a boarded church."

"For Trump, the time is always ripe to throw kerosene on his own dumpster fire. .. 

Faced with a threefold crisis of racial, health and economic disasters, we have a three-year-old in the Oval Office.  

Our get-tough president started his day by telling the nation’s governors that the world was laughing at them – a recurring nightmare that he loves to project on to everyone else... 

“I am your president of law and order,” he said in the Rose Garden, as thousands of Americans protested against the nation’s agents of law and order. Trump said he would mobilise “all available federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting” to protect “your second amendment rights”.  

If you’ve missed all the protesters seizing weapons from NRA members, you’re not alone. That last bit was a call to arms for every vigilante to escalate the violence. We have somehow devolved from dog whistle to foghorn politics. 

There is no end of Republican arsonists who have happily torched their lifelong support for states’ rights and their diehard opposition to an all-powerful central government."

More at The Guardian.