U.S. President Donald Trump aims to create âtheatrics of the spectacleâ and itâs not going to get any better, says a cultural studies professor and prolific author.
Henry Giroux, a Rhode Island native who teaches at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., and penned âAmerica at War with Itself,â says he believes it will be increasingly difficult to understand what the president is doing or why.
Trump intentionally sows an environment of âshock,â âsensationalismâ and âconfusionâ where itâs unclear what is true or what is happening, Giroux told ŰÎŰ´ŤĂ˝ Channel Monday.
âHeâs more concerned about throwing information out that causes uncertainty and chaosâ that drives the press to have to chase stories about what he means rather than asking serious questions about what heâs doing, Giroux said.
Trumpâs allegation via Twitter on the weekend that former president Barack Obama ordered Trumpâs phones to be wiretapped has been rejected by both FBI director James Comey and former National Intelligence director James Clapper, though the House and Senate intelligence committees say they will honour the presidentâs request to investigate.
Giroux, who spent his life studying and teaching in the United States before coming to McMaster in 2004, says Trumpâs charge has no credibility because he has âmade a career about lying about Barack Obama.â
And if there was anything to back Trumpâs claim, the president holds the power to declassify information.
âHe could easily, if there is anything that he knows, he could simply declassify this and make it public and to provide some sort of evidence, which he has not done.â
Giroux says the allegations are part of Trumpâs much-used tactic to create âmassive diversionâ from issues of substance, such as the controversies surrounding Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the administrationâs connections to Russia.
Giroux, whose book explores the role of hate in the presidential campaign, says the newly revised travel ban announced Monday, which takes the target list down to six nations, is not a toning down of Trumpâs anti-immigration stance.
âSimply because he eliminates Iraq or modifies the wait time, I mean this is still an act of massive discrimination against an entire religious group.â