Everything Trump has ever done is a distraction, of course

The Alaska summit was essentially meaningless, according to California Democrat Eric Swalwell, who served as House manager in Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial.

The US president fêting Russia’s war criminal president Vladimir Putin and publicly musing about handing over chunks of Ukraine’s territory to the country that invaded it three years ago was actually only significant in one way: distraction.

“This is entirely about Donald Trump refusing to release the Epstein files and in putting forward this scripted counter programming to that,” Swalwell told CNN.

Trump’s ability to manipulate the narrative is legendary, but luckily, Democrats are not going to be fooled this time. But the trouble with the vigilant approach is that it can be difficult to work out what they think the US president is actually doing.

So, the Alaska summit is just a distraction. Good to know. Is Trump’s repeated deployment of the US National Guard against American citizens on flimsy pretexts — a concrete and provable action with real-world consequences — something we should be concerned with?

Not according to former House speaker Nancy Pelosi: “Now, he’s activating the DC Guard to distract from his incompetent mishandling of tariffs, health care, education and immigration — just to name a few blunders.”

Former secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg agreed: “He needs to get his base talking and thinking about something besides his refusal to open up the Epstein files because he’s mixed up in them.”

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy similarly called the deployment of the National Guard a “stunt” and a “distraction”.

“If Trump actually cared about our communities, he would be working with our cities, not against them,” the Democratic Mayors Association said in a statement. “But the truth is Trump doesn’t care — he only wants to create yet another political charade to serve his own interests and distract Americans from his failures.”

Perhaps having noticed that Trump has threatened to continue sending the army into cities controlled by his political opposition, Hawaiian Senator Brian Schatz acknowledged there might be some real-word impact to what was happening: “So yes, we are witnessing a dangerous Rubicon being crossed in real time, and anyone on any side of the political aisle who believes that we ought to be a nation of laws needs to call this what it is: creeping authoritarianism.”

“But,” he continued, “what is also true is that this is actually a distraction meant to deflect people’s attention from a really unpopular piece of legislation.”

California Representative Robert Garcia, ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, echoed the sentiment, saying, “Donald Trump’s economy is failing, his Epstein files cover-up won’t go away, and public support for his agenda is way down. So it’s no surprise that he is trying to distract the American public.”

The Epstein files keep coming up. So, should we be focusing on the ongoing saga concerning the deceased sex trafficker and financier?

Well, not according to Pennsylvanian Senator John Fetterman: “Clearly it’s a distraction,” he told NBC when asked about the files. “I’m much more concerned about more substantial things like cuts in Medicaid and, now coming up in September, not shutting the government down.”

Virginia Democrat Bobby Scott went so far as to suggest Republicans actually wanted people to talk about Epstein to avoid the political fallout from Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill“.

“Republicans took away people’s health care, took away their nutrition benefits to cut taxes for the wealthy and ran up $3 trillion in debt. And so they’re getting people to talk about Epstein so that people won’t find it out … any discussion about Epstein diverts attention from what we ought to be talking about,” Scott said.

The bill allocates US$170 billion to its goal of deporting 1 million immigrants each year. So is the administration’s staggering cruelty towards immigrants and the destruction of their due process rights the real issue we should be focusing on? Christ no!

“You know, this is the distraction of the day,” California Governor Gavin Newsom scoffed. “This is the debate they want. This is their 80-20 issue, as they’ve described it.”

He went on:

It’s exactly the debate [Republicans] want, because they don’t want this debate on the tariffs. They don’t want to be accountable to markets today … They want to have this conversation. Don’t get distracted by distractions. We’re all perfect sheep.

Ah, so it’s Trump tariffs that we need to talk about! I knew it! Except… according to Senator Chris Murphy (again), Trump’s tariffs are a “distraction” from his “real agenda”.

Murphy is particularly vigilant in seeing through Trump’s distractions. In June, when Trump revived the travel ban he imposed in his first term, it was only meant to “distract”. Trump’s plan to take over and own Gaza “succeeded in distracting everyone from the real story”, Murphy lamented, and “when Trump talks about Canada or Greenland or Panama, it’s just clickbait distraction so we don’t pay attention to his central goal: passing a massive tax cut for his billionaire and corporate friends and paying for it by slashing Medicare and Medicaid”.

All that needs to happen now is for the Democrats to recruit John Mowrey, chief investment officer of NFJ Investment Group, as a candidate. Back in May, he argued that those tax cuts were actually a distraction from tariffs.

Whatever Trump’s actual agenda is, it’s clear that at least the Democrats agree it must be loudly and clearly opposed in any way possible — except when representative Al Green “disrupted” Trump’s congressional address in March. That, unfortunately, was a “distraction” from what really mattered.