Analysts warn that Trump could exploit a staged crisis to distract from his collapse in popularity

Trump is starting to lose big, from courtrooms, to the press increasingly calling him out, to millions of Americans showing up in the streets every few weeks. As anybody who has ever lived or worked in an autocratic state can tell you, a strongman or wannabe dictator is most dangerous when he’s on his back foot.

Trump’s tariffs have put America on the verge of a serious inflationary recession, the Supreme Court and multiple lower courts have repeatedly ruled against him, his public approval polling is in the crapper, and even conservative publications and former Republican politicians (free from the strictures of an upcoming primary) are openly calling him out (including in Murdoch publications).

The first lesson they teach in dictator school is that “there must be an enemy within.” Trum