When my word auto filled the intended goat into goad I found that google had previous references but also an interesting article by Andrew Phillips on the interchangeability of "goat" and "goad".
While Trump frequently scape goats using people (name almost everyone except his wife) he is actually goaded more frequently. When Manafort's house was raided by the FBI Trump responded within an hour with a disconnected tweet about kicking out Transgender service members from the military, almost certainly because he thought that the Manafort search would be leaked and he wanted to hijack the news cycle with inflammatory bs. It wasn't leaked and Trump wasted a "Trumped up outrage" on nothing.
In this case the Transgender service people were not "scape goats" but were the object of a "scape goad".
While Trump frequently uses "scape goat" as one of his tactical tools he is constantly reacting to every slight and disaster on a strategic basis. On that basis I decided that in Trump's case "scape goading" was more accurate even though many of his scape goats were a result of his being goaded.
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