It, almost certainly, is about to get worse.
A week ago I had a business meeting and the fellow started with something that was obviously on his mind, "I don't want to get into a partisan thing, and I don't agree with everything that Trump says BUT I do agree with him about athletes standing for the national anthem and not disrespecting the flag".
We talked for a bit and I gave him an alternative way of looking at it but then remarked, "its about to get much worse, much worse." He was curious and I explained that we weren't getting news from PR but when we did the news was going to be much worse than people thought. I explained that in modern society when you wipe out the electrical grid you have wiped out the foundation of society. Not only refrigerated food and drugs but also fresh drinking water, and much worse, sewage. When I told him that we were facing a real cholera epidemic that could effect tens of thousands, very quickly, I couldn't really follow the football drama or the stupid tweets. Cholera in the US affecting thousands should be everyone's first concern.
As the situation in PR allows for more interaction we will start getting the details and the pictures. When the basics have been established then there will be a house by house search for victims and it will take weeks to find all those that didn't survive the hurricane.
It will be a relentless day by day record of pain and suffering, some of which is not the fault of anybody and a lot of how Trump's cluelessness caused unnecessary death, suffering and loss.
At that point it will, almost certainly, get worse, much worse.
Trump has only one out. Trump isn't just a vacuous narcissistic semi-literate superficial performer, he is a vacuous narcissistic semi-literate superficial ONE TRICK performer. He has only one out - escalate the buffoonery to a new and higher level of confrontation, reframing, alarmist, scape goading.
The only way that he will get to out flank the pincer movement of bad Puerto Rico stories, general mismanagement stories, Bannon taking over the Republican Party stories, and the drip drip drip leaks from the Mueller investigation is to engage in a military confrontation.
China's closing of most of North Korean expat businesses has put China in the driver's seat in dealing with the North Koreans, along with almost everyone, including Russian revulsion at Trumps wild gestures.
That leaves Iran. At a time when Iran has swerved to its most rational course and made every effort to respond positively to the international agreement including large purchases of Boeing civilian aircraft Trump will be able to stir anti Iranian hysteria that too many including Senator Schumer have used for cheap and dishonest appeals to their bases.
A simple confrontation that triggers brief firing confrontations that doesn't lead to an actual open ended conflict (that would disrupt too much of Trump's golf and social schedule) could bring him weeks of headlines, threats, bombastic tweets and vitriolic nonsense wiping all of the other news of the front page.
It would also bring other benefits for Trump. Any military activity in the Straits of Hormuz will invalidate the underwriting of insurance for the shippers and disrupt 40% of the worlds freely traded oil. Oil prices would go up and bring immediate relief to Russia, OPEC (especially Saudi Arabia who is having an inconvenient debt crises) and the petroleum base of the Republican Party.
It is bad now but we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that it is about to get much worse.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Cool new term you got there.
I've given it some thought and I think he's doing that to both San Juan Mayor Cruz and Kim Jong Un.
When my word auto filled the intended goat into goad I found that google had previous references but also an interesting article by Andrew Phillips on the interchangeability of "goat" and "goad".
While Trump frequently scape goats using people (name almost everyone except his wife) he is actually goaded more frequently. When Manafort's house was raided by the FBI Trump responded within an hour with a disconnected tweet about kicking out Transgender service members from the military, almost certainly because he thought that the Manafort search would be leaked and he wanted to hijack the news cycle with inflammatory bs. It wasn't leaked and Trump wasted a "Trumped up outrage" on nothing.
In this case the Transgender service people were not "scape goats" but were the object of a "scape goad".
While Trump frequently uses "scape goat" as one of his tactical tools he is constantly reacting to every slight and disaster on a strategic basis. On that basis I decided that in Trump's case "scape goading" was more accurate even though many of his scape goats were a result of his being goaded.
And will use it as an excuse to lock up the opposition. That's a scary thought. 
