The Update Desk: No True Supporter of Mine

One of last week's posts was about the president's well-known penchant for encouraging his supporters to be violent, and applauding them when they are.  I did the post to show that he doth protest too much when he says there's no room in MAGAville for violence, and that no true supporter of his would ever do anything like what his true supporters did on January 6th. 

The post cited a number of examples, including the one below, which were collected by folks at Vox.

December 2016: After Trump bullied then-Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly for months, Kelly said that Trump’s social media director was responsible for inciting the many death threats she was receiving. “The vast majority of Donald Trump supporters are not at all this way,” Kelly said, according to the Guardian. “It’s that far corner of the internet that really enjoys nastiness and threats and unfortunately there is a man who works for Donald Trump whose job it is to stir these people up and that man needs to stop doing that. His name is Dan Scavino.”

According to this article in the NY Times, announcing his promotion to Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications last April,

Mr. Scavino, a constant presence whether the president is in the White House or traveling, flags content from the internet for his boss and is said to be the only aide with access to Mr. Trump’s personal Twitter account. He is one of the aides Mr. Trump trusts without reservation.

Scavino was such a crucial component of the president's social media activities that he was named in the lawsuit in 2017 when Trump was sued for blocking people from Twitter.  The NY Times tried to dig into what Scavino did, and found truth in what Megyn Kelly had said. Scavino was the "secretary of offense," the guy "whose job is to help @RealDonaldTrump stay unpresidential." And he was good at it. 

Now and again, Trump would enlist Scavino... to act as a proxy, attacking the campaign’s enemies from his own account. At other times, Scavino took the initiative himself... In March 2016, Scavino retweeted a conspiracy video purporting to demonstrate that Cruz was having an affair with a former aide, Amanda Carpenter. Carpenter, who is married with children, went on the air and heatedly denied any impropriety. She also condemned Scavino by name, calling his attack a “smear job.”

“It was a campaign, and they fight dirty, and they didn’t mind if I was collateral damage in the process,” Carpenter told me. “And they won. And no consequences. What Scavino did to me and what he still does to others would get any other professional fired. In Trump’s universe, it’s a qualification. A willingness to engage in lies and smears on behalf of Donald Trump is a sign of loyalty that Trump treasures.”

Now, why the focus on Scavino, you ask? Well, Scavino was honored by the Department of Defense last week. From his own Facebook page, we see that he was awarded the DoD Medal for Distinguished Public Service. 

The Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service is the highest award that is presented by the Secretary of Defense, to a private citizen, politician, non-career federal employee, or foreign national. It is presented for exceptionally distinguished service of significance to the Department of Defense as a whole, or a DoD Component or function, where recognition at the component level would not be sufficient for the service rendered.

Now, like all of these honorary awards, lots of people get them for things that we regular folk don't recognize as being exceptional in any way - and that's true across multiple administrations, it's not just a Trump thing. 

In light of Scavino's role as Secretary of Offense for the president, and of keeping Trump's social media accounts unpresidential, and of attacking any and all comers, for any number of made-up reasons, it's kind of hard to swallow this line from Scavino's citation:

As a result of his tireless efforts, the United States is safer, stronger and freer. 

Safer? Ask any of the Capitol Police officers who were injured during the insurrection. Ask the Vice President, Mother, and their daughter if they felt safe at the Capitol. Ask any of the members of Congress who were trapped, or ask their staffers, barricaded in rooms with Trump supporters banging on the doors trying to get in.

Stronger? I guess you could say we're stronger, in that we did not break, but there are rifts that may never heal and will never be forgotten.

Freer? With state and federal elected officials under constant threat, with election volunteers under threat, with DC in complete lockdown so we can inaugurate the next leader of the free world?

I'm sorry, awarding the attack dog for making us "safer, stronger and freer" is not "creating unity," as the Rs like to say. It's not "creating accountability," as the Rs like to say. It's the opposite of that, in fact.  

Not only that, but the citation says he was Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications from January 2017 to January 2021. That, folks, is untrue. 

Oopsie.