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The Trump administration chose Minnesota as ground zero for an operation that can best be described in the parlance of Washington DC as 'counter-programming'. That's shorthand for the use of Government power in an intentionally newsworthy way to change the media narrative away from another inconvenient story.

In this case, they are executing a complex political approach which echoes a sophisticated Russian military strategy called 'reflexive control'. Developed in the Soviet Union, the primary goal of this strategy is to dominate the information space in order to force your opponent to voluntarily make bad decisions.

When the US Government floods a major city with law enforcement agents, people with cameras on their cellphones are going to be there to oppose the movement, news outlets are going to cover the chaos. Soon after will follow the organizers, the activists, and the provocateurs who amplify these narratives.

Reflexively, the media narrative will move towards this stimulus – and rightfully so – given the Government's illegal actions.

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However, the voluntary bad decision Donald Trump wants to trigger is simple.

He wants for the information space to stop focusing on his sex trafficking cover-up, his trillion dollar healthcare cut to fund equally massive tax cut to his elite political donors, and the White House's enormous consumption tax levies while dictating by Executive Order the transformation of America's heretofore strong economy into right-wing socialist paradise for loyal oligarchs.

And that is how the Trump administration is using its counter-programming efforts to achieve reflexive control over the media narrative, the discussions of activists and the broader national conversation about politics.

Trump and his regime are desperate to move away from their cover up of the Jeffrey Epstein files exposing a trans-Atlantic pedophile ring, desperate to deflect from their multiple major policy failures that are economically oppressing hundreds of millions of Americans.

And this is the White House's only plan.

Distraction Tactics

What we are witnessing in Minnesota is the deadly use of counter-programming on a level not even seen during the first Trump administration.

Minneapolis, surrounding the banks of the mighty Mississippi River, is part of its thriving Twin Cities metropolitan area, including the Minnesota state capital city of St. Paul lying just to its east along a bend of the river.

Home to about 3.8 million residents, the Minneapolis region holds a global political relevance far greater than the size of its population owing to its concentration of the headquarters of 14 prominent companies in the Fortune 500 from 3M to Ecolab Inc to Target.

Minneapolis is globally known for its notoriously awful relations between police and citizens of color, in the wake of international protests set off by one of its officers' murdering George Floyd, while his co-workers complicity watched for nine long minutes.

What we are seeing in Minneapolis and throughout Minnesota is nothing short of using the full might of the American federal government's law enforcement powers to just redirect the national political narrative.

How big has the operation grown?

Recently, I learned from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey – who went viral for saying "ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis" – that the city only has roughly 600 sworn law enforcement officers on its city police force, and the ICE task force occupying the city numbers over 3,000 federal agents.

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