Donald Trump goes to church for photo op with bible and declares war on his own people – Martyn McLaughlin

Donald Trump’s extraordinarily menacing warning to his country betrays how he has fully embraced authoritarianism and just how dangerous he truly is, writes Martyn McLaughlin

President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John's Church near the White House (Picture: Patrick Semansky/AP)

How has it come to pass that in a country where thousands of people continue to be lost every week to a pandemic, and the prospect of a double-dip recession holds the promise of untold pain to come, that its leader – the man who took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend its constitution – is the one expediting its descent into bedlam?

The political ascendancy of Donald Trump has always felt like playing with fire, its flames forever flickering after millions of disenfranchised Americans poured their latent anger into an empty, gleaming vessel, then stood back and waited to see what might happen.

The inferno now engulfing their country is not their fault, but it should serve as a constant reminder to them – and future generations – of just how fragile our sense of normalcy can be.

No one should ever forget the scenes which played out in Washington DC late Monday evening, as the leader of the free world emerged from the bowels of the city upon a hill to issue a declaration of war on his own people. What had long lurked below the surface was brought into plain sight.

The studied menace of Mr Trump’s prepared statement, accompanied by an ambient soundtrack of sirens and screams, was chilling enough. But the events which preceded and followed it ensured the writing of an ignominious chapter in American history.

Defy me at your peril

The timing of the National Guard and riot police’s forward charge in the ravaged streets surrounding Pennsylvania Avenue was no coincidence, taking place well before the evening curfew came into place, but mere moments before Mr Trump was due to speak.

Make no mistake, this was tyranny by design – a dreadful and dread-inducing narrative expressly engineered for the rolling news era. On one screen, the President read aloud his threats, dressed in language of solicitude. “America needs creation not destruction, cooperation not contempt, security not anarchy, healing not hatred, justice not chaos,” he said, addressing the nation.

The other screen provided the subtext, as military and mounted police fired tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets into crowds of peaceful protestors, with journalists on the scene subjected to violent, indiscriminate attacks.

The gas had barely dissipated in the streets around the White House in time for a surreal coda, as Mr Trump stalked through Lafayette Square from the White House, coming to a stop outside St John’s Episcopal Church, where only hours previously, the clergy and congregation had gathered to pray and heal.

Framed by its boarded-up windows, a glowering Mr Trump stood motionless, save for raising his right arm aloft, a black bible clutched in his hand. The impulsiveness of the moment required guesswork of its brooding, inchoate symbolism, but its purpose was explicit: I am your President of law and order, it said. Defy me at your peril.

It is hard to recall a scene quite so sinister in modern American history, and even more difficult to accept that the violence and intimidation which preceded it was designed to clear the route. It has been several years since I last read the Book of Exodus, and even longer, I suspect, for Mr Trump, but when Moses parted the Red Sea to provide safe passage for the Israelites, he did not require the military’s help.

‘Vicious dogs, ominous weapons’

No doubt a President whose every utterance is geared towards the visual grammar of television wished to project power, making the journey in full view of the cameras. But in doing so, he betrayed just how debilitated his presidency has become, and how dangerous he is as a result.

Mr Trump does not care for the hollowed-out pain and rage that has gripped his country, and left a watching world appalled at the way the great American experiment is at risk of combusting altogether. His one concern, his only fear, is being perceived as weak.

How else to explain the only time Mr Trump has shown any sign of distress in the past week? It came in a teleconference with governors, in which he fretted that Minnesota – and America by proxy – was becoming a “laughing stock all over the world”.

The notion of securing justice for the family of George Floyd is not even on the agenda of a man who will forever cleave to the ambition of being seen as a populist strongman, yet who hid away in an underground bunker in the White House – a place built, lest we forget, by enslaved men and immigrants – fulminating about “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons”. Above him, under clear blue skies, millions demanded racial justice.

Much has been written and little is truly understood about the roots of the fundamental dysfunction at the heart of the President’s character, which in times of crisis seems to harden so as to border on psychopathy. It may be the coarsened bravado of a ruthless property developer, or even the legacy of being repeatedly told by an overbearing father that he was a “killer”. A “king,” no less. In the end, old Fred was proved right. But the crown grows heavy. The kingdom is burning.

Having ripped through the grids of Manhattan and the sand dunes of Aberdeenshire, this brutish birthright is now being imposed on a nation which finds itself dragged deeper into darkness with every passing day. Many Americans presumed that, even in his most febrile moments, Mr Trump would discover the need to moderate his base instincts and chart a course of social conservatism.

How naive such brittle hopes of acquiescence now seem. Mr Trump is no longer borrowing the language and customs of authoritarians. He has become one. The grand, yearning project of America, so imperfect yet so restless in its search for betterment, has stood for centuries as a beacon of hope. It is now lost in the gloom, in desperate need of a guiding light.

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