Trump is using one of the oldest despicable tricks in marketing and public relations: Distract people with outlandish issues so they won’t focus on what he is really doing.

This is a manipulative maneuver used by Hitler, Putin, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong Un, to name just a few notorious dictators.

We’ve seen this hateful tactic most recently in Trump’s attacks on James Comey and Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift.

Meanwhile, Trump’s Department of Justice’s new Weaponization Working Group intends to investigate his opponents and, if unable to charge them with crimes, then “name” and “shame” them in an attempt to ruin their reputations and lives.

These are tactics that we should all note and be aware of, but we must not let these maneuvers sidetrack us from understanding what Trump is really doing:

• Getting rich through the presidency;
• Trying to dismantle the nation’s court system:
• Forcing an end to the freedom of speech;
• Minimizing and eliminating resistance by the media;
• Devising a scenario where he can use the military to control Americans;
• Making an end-run around the U.S. Constitution so due process is no longer required when a person is arrested;
• Scaring and weakening the American population through decreased healthcare, higher prices and other tactics; and
• Figuring out ways to eliminate elections, or, at the very least, rigging them so huge voting blocks of people (i.e. Democrats) are no longer effective. Please note: Trump has softly indicated he may not run for a third term. But let’s see what actually happens.

The above are just a few of Trump’s strategies taken out of what I call The Playbook for a Dictator. It’s a mythical playbook—there is no such book; I made up the title—but history shows, if such a book did exist, its recommended strategies would parrot what Trump is doing and what every dictator in history has done to gain ultimate power over a country.

How can we—just ordinary citizens—stop Trump? Click here to see 10 important moves that you can use.

Most of all, don’t get sidetracked. Keep your attention on what he does, not on what he writes in his stupid tweets to smear people who oppose him.

And…

Learn more about how dictators come into power and what they do. There are many books on the topic, or click here to watch a PBS series on the topic.

By the way, not surprisingly, Trump announced in early May that he intends to end federal funding for PBS: More info.