"The iconoclasm is good for us. It’s a great political issue for the president."

Said an anonymous "senior [Trump] campaign official," quoted in "Trump’s Twitter feed reads like a local crime blotter as he stokes a culture war" by Josh Dawsey (WaPo). The "crime blotter" material in question is the vandalism aimed at public statues and monuments. And, yes, it makes sense for the Trump campaign to see this as a good issue for them, but they didn't start the unrest and destruction. It strikes me as unfair to say that he's "stoking" any kind of "war," when the protests and attendant violence arose out of police actions in particular cities (cities run by Democrats).

What did Trump have to do with that? Is he supposed to stand back and say nothing? His antagonists take whatever they can get, every single day, and spin it against him. Are they "stoking" a "war"? No, they're just doing their normal thing, plying their trade, writing columns like "Trump’s Twitter feed reads like a local crime blotter as he stokes a culture war" by Josh Dawsey in The Washington Post. Josh Dawsey is writing that and Trump is doing his tweets, taking the material of the day, and spinning it into an argument for his side.

Of course, he's going to improve his political standing by crying out against "the two Anarchists who threw paint on the magnificent George Washington Statue in Manhattan" and the rest of the violence toward inanimate objects. He sees and takes the advantage of embracing and extolling the icons in this time of iconoclasm.

Dawsey quotes the presidential historian Douglas Brinkley:

"His argument is Main Street values against a crazy wave of anarchy. A lot will depend on how inflamed the monument issue gets. Trump has a vested issue in this. He’s actually cheering the anarchists on, daring them to take more down."

He’s actually cheering the anarchists on... You see how that works (in the mind of the eminent historian)? Because Trump speaks out against the destruction and some people hate Trump, they're inspired to do more destruction. It's a way to get Trump. And you see the rank perversity of the implicit argument: Don't speak out against the destructiveness you oppose, because it will only inflame the destroyers, and they will do more destruction.

But look more closely: This dynamic of Trump taking advantage of the iconoclasm and the iconoclasts ramping up their destruction might hurt the moderate Democrats who are trying to win the 2020 elections. It's not a good issue for them, and hanging back and waiting for it to die down and go away on its own isn't working.

ADDED: I'm reading the Wikipedia page for Douglas Brinkley:

[D]uring the 2013 inauguration coverage, CNN referred to him as "a man who knows more about the presidency than just about any human being alive." In contrast, in 2006, historian Wilfred McClay in the New York Sun appraised Brinkley's scholarship as one that has failed to "put forward a single memorable idea, a single original analysis, or a single lapidary phrase." Similarly, author Bill Bryson characterized Brinkley as "a minor American academic and sometime critic whose powers of observation and generosity of spirit would fit comfortably into a proton and still leave room for an echo."

I think the obvious answer is no, but "Is It Okay to Make Your Seder About Trump?"...

... seems to be an issue worth examining to Jonathan Chait.

Is this just another variation on the perennial Thanksgiving columns about sitting down to dinner with your right-wing uncle? Well, it's not just the standard problem of sitting down to dinner with relatives, because "the sitting president [bears] such an uncanny resemblance to a villain from a traditional Jewish narrative."

Like the Pharaoh, Trump is a builder fond of exploitative labor practices and an arch-nationalist, with a nasty habit of making deals then welching on his side of the bargain. To be sure, Trump bears an even stronger resemblance to Purim’s vain, sexually entitled, easily manipulated King Achashverosh.

Both Passover and Purim lend themselves easily to Trump-bashing because they revolve around a common theme deeper than the particulars of their stories: They celebrate a minority group’s survival against persecution, and contain larger warnings about the kinds of conditions that give rise to such persecution....

By the way, speaking of minority groups... is it "welching" — as Chait has it — or "welshing." My research shows both spellings — going all the way back to the 1860s. I'm looking at the (unlinkable OED), which says the word is "Sometimes considered offensive in view of the conjectured connection with Welsh people." But the etymology is "uncertain" and only possibly based on the "alleged dishonesty of Welsh people."

I had thought that "welsh" was the correct spelling and those those who used "welch" were trying to cover up the insult to the Welsh, but now I think "welch" should be preferred, because it's a good, pithy, meaningful word and the ethnic slur origin isn't established and shouldn't be encouraged.

Also, I've read all the quotes at OED, and my favorite one — from Hunter S. Thompson — spells it with the c: "You're 100% right in saying I've ‘fucked up’, but a little ridiculous in implying that I'm welching."

ADDED: If you accept the analogy that Trump is equivalent to the Pharaoh, you are saying that  ordinary working Americans are the equivalent of slaves. That is disrespectful to the suffering of slaves — and there are many slaves in the world even now — and should be anathema.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ambrose said:

Isn't Passover about a large number of undocumented people LEAVING a country? Didn't the Pharaoh want them to STAY AND KEEP WORKING FOE SLAVE WAGES? I think that makes the Pharaoh the complete opposite of Trump. No two people in history have ever been less alike.