Made-for-TV fascism: how Trump's 'crime explosion' ploy could backfire
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/25/trump-federal-agents-portland-ploy-election
Trump is facing a big election with an even bigger need for a political masterstroke enter a surge of federal agents to fight supposed violence
With an election looming and the polls looking bad, Donald Trump was in need of a quick political boost.
Seizing on television images of a procession of refugees out of Honduras, the president announced an imminent invasion of the United States by a migrant caravan and said he would deploy 15,000 military personnel to stop it. For weeks, Fox News blared coverage of the emergency.
That was in October 2018, and as a political strategy ahead of the midterm elections, the gambit utterly failed.
The Democrats flipped 40 seats in the House of Representatives the next month and racked up the largest popular vote margin in midterm elections history, on the highest turnout in 100 years. The caravan emergency was heard of no more.
*snip*