Trump Propaganda Tactics

The president retweeted these lies to make his case that most
everyone is lying about COVID-19 to hurt him and the economy --
with Trump, everything is about him -- suffering and deaths of others are of no concern
to this incompetent, sociopath narcissist

In my opinion, dark free speech or propaganda is the single most powerful and dangerous tool that demagogues, tyrants and kleptocrats have to achieve their immoral and evil ends. The topic has been discussed here in many discussions, e.g., here, here, here and here.

This OP is intended to exemplify a common dark free speech tactic, unwarranted character assassination. In this case, the president attacked Tony Fauci's expertise regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Presumably the attack is designed to confuse the public and deflect its attention from how the president has basically failed to respond to the pandemic.

The assassin's tactic: Destroy trust

The attack was launched by the White House sending a list of statements by Fauci that it claims are false. The list was sent to the Washington Post. WaPo writes:

"What Fauci has done is make obvious both that the pandemic is as bad as it seems and that there are ways in which it can be addressed, which at times conflict with what Trump would like to see. Trump’s vision for what happens with the virus’s spread is fairly straightforward: Businesses reopen and kids go back to school and he gets reelected and then it just sort of becomes a nonissue somehow. Maybe he doesn’t get to that fourth step; it’s not clear. What Fauci and, more broadly, government and medical experts foresee is grimmer: With better containment and Americans taking more responsibility for stopping the spread of the virus, maybe we can keep the death toll down until there’s a vaccine.

The White House’s release of wan talking points about ways Fauci has been “wrong” — a descriptor that’s bolstered heavily by being applied with the benefit of hindsight — is a fundamentally hollow act. Fauci’s approach to the pandemic has been guidance tempered by uncertainty. Trump’s has been certainty unhindered by guidance. White House officials now want to rein in Fauci by cherry-picking instances in which they can take Fauci out of context to use the uncertainties of the pandemic against him."

The statements the White House picked and took out of context were mostly from early in the pandemic when there was more uncertainty about the nature of the virus and how it spread.

The WaPo article analyzes the attack as basically arguing that Fauci cannot be trusted, thus deflecting distrust from the president himself to Fauci. Trump and his team are asserted to want people to be unsure about just how good or bad the pandemic is. The idea in this propaganda is that it is politically better for Trump if there’s an official whom Americans and his base feel unsure about trusting. The WaPo points out that the president has used this tactic to make opponents look unreliable to shield his own untrustworthiness. It is a powerful deception tactic.

WaPo concludes from the circumstances, including a presidential  reTweet that the "CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors" are all lying about COVID-19 to hurt the president's re-election and the economy, and its analysis of the situation that "Trump would rather have no one be trusted than that he stand out as unusually untrustworthy, even if the cost is confidence in his team and in experts trying to tamp down the pandemic."

Immoral, evil or just politics as usual?

Millions of people are influenced by the president's words and actions. Some people will continue to key on this to help them rationalize their refusal to wear a face mask or follow distancing guidelines. Some of those people will get infected and die and/or infect someone else who dies or infects someone else who dies. The president bears most of the responsibility for the suffering and deaths that his re-election dictates he does. His enablers, including the spineless GOP in congress, also share significant responsibility. Blame for the suffering and deaths that they cause is on mostly their hands.