Tim Murphy at Mother Jones says Minneapolis is Trump’s campaign dream.

Rioters in the city were “THUGS,” he wrote, and he proposed sending in the National Guard to “get the job done right.” In a tweet so depraved that Twitter appended a disclaimer, he quoted an infamous 1960s Miami cop: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Trump’s comments weren’t just those of a head of state addressing unrest in a major city. They were also the words of a candidate for reelection who believes that what happens in Minnesota could make or break his chances this fall. The president has made repeated campaign stops in the state over the last four years; in threatening violence against protesters, he was sticking to a longstanding strategy. Trump believes that by attacking the state’s largest city and casting its residents as radical refugees and “thugs”—by driving a huge racist wedge between the Twin Cities and all the rest—he can flip the state he lost by the smallest of margins in 2016.

And, bonus, he really loves doing it. It’s cynical and fun; win win!

Trump’s campaign in Minnesota, now as ever, is rooted in white grievance and fear and what he calls “law and order,” by which he means targeting immigrants and people of color for abuse—by pinning all that’s gone wrong on blue cities and the people who live there.

The campaign is going to be an absolute nightmare.

So Nicola Spurling deleted that defamatory tweet, and then reiterated the ideology.

“Children must be accepted for who they are, not told that who they are is wrong.”

But who is it that actually tells children that who they are is wrong? Who is it that refuses to accept them for who they are?

Spurling of course is claiming that it’s people who don’t believe the trans ideology, but that relies on a very peculiar understanding of the phrase “who they are.” It relies on taking fantasy as the truth of who people are, while treating the physical reality of who they are as an illusion.

In short it flips everything.

When I was a child I projected myself into a great many fictional characters from books and movies and tv shows. I would live my life while pretending to be other people for much of the time, while always knowing perfectly well it was pretending. Imagine if the adults had asked me who I was at that moment and then said that was who I really was – imagine the traffic jam.

There is no magical spiritual “who we are” that is not just separate from but the opposite of what our bodies determine we are. We are our bodies; our bodies are we. We are also our histories and our social situations. If we were born white and middle class we don’t get to say that who we really are is black and working class. We can say we feel more affinity for the black working class than the while middle class, but we can’t then try to leverage that into mandatory acceptance from the black working class. It’s funny how woke people would instantly agree to that while still feeling so very empowered to tell women the opposite.

Or, more succinctly –

Merkel says no, she’s not going to Trump’s party.

“The federal chancellor thanks President Trump for his invitation to the G7 summit at the end of June in Washington. As of today, considering the overall pandemic situation, she cannot agree to her personal participation, to a journey to Washington,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told POLITICO Friday.

…

Merkel’s refusal to attend the summit in person risks scuppering Trump’s attempts to present the gathering as a landmark moment drawing a line under the lockdowns and travel bans imposed to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

You know what else risks scuppering that? The coronavirus pandemic. It hasn’t gone anywhere, so drawing a line under the lockdowns and travel bans would be incredibly stupid.

Trump canceled the summit in March due to the crisis and said he would host a videconference instead. But in a tweet on May 20, he said he might reschedule the summit, proclaiming, “It would be a great sign to all — normalization!”

But, again, the pandemic hasn’t gone anywhere, so normalization isn’t possible. He can say the word all he likes, but it doesn’t change the reality.

“The president thinks no greater example of reopening in this transition to greatness would be the G7, and G7 happening here,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Tuesday. “We will protect world leaders who come here, just like we protect people in the White House,” McEnany added. “So we want to see it happen. We think it will happen. And, so far, foreign leaders are very much on board with the idea.”

Except they don’t protect people in the White House.

But Merkel, who is a research scientist by professional training, has said that she believes June is still too soon to hold large gatherings given that the virus is still circulating, and experts are urging continued vigilance and social distancing, even as economies begin to open up again.

Officials aware of the transatlantic discussions said Trump was furious over Merkel’s reluctance to attend the summit and on Thursday he phoned French President Emmanuel Macron in a pique.

He doesn’t do pique. He does full-on rage tantrum, not pique.