Noam Chomsky: Donald Trump could stage false-flag terror attack to maintain fanbase amid failing policies

Donald Trump's administration could stage a false-flag terrorist attack to maintain the support of voters after they realise his "promises are built on sand", Noam Chomsky has claimed.

The left-wing intellectual said working-class Americans would eventually recognise the President's "rhetoric is about helping the working man and so on, but the [policy] proposals are savage and damaging".

It comes days after the defeat of a healthcare bill designed to fulfil Mr Trump's key campaign promise to repeal and replace Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said 24 million people could have been left uninsured if the bill had passed.

Professor Chomsky told AlterNet: "In order to maintain his popularity, the Trump administration will have to try to find some means of rallying the support and changing the discourse from the policies that they are carrying out, which are basically a wrecking ball, to something else.

"Maybe scapegoating, saying, 'Well, I'm sorry, I can't bring your jobs back because these bad people are preventing it.' And the typical scapegoating goes to vulnerable people, immigrants, terrorists, Muslims and elitists, whoever it may be.

"We shouldn't put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly."

Earlier this week Mr Trump signed new legislation repealing regulation designed to protect workers from wage theft. The Obama-era rule penalised businesses that violated wage and safety laws by pulling their government contracts if they racked up too many offences.

Congressional Republicans said the regulations were too restrictive and killed jobs. They used the Congressional Review Act on Monday to effectively repeal the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule. Republicans have employed the rarely used law to revoke more than a dozen Obama-era policies since Mr Trump took office.

On Monday evening, Mr Trump commended the new resolution.

Today I'm signing 4 bills under the Congressional Review Act that cancels regulations & eliminates unnecessary, job-killing rules," he wrote on Twitter.

The regulation forced businesses to disclose each time they broke a law in the past three years, including violations relating to civil rights, health and safety, and minimum wage and overtime violations.

And activists have said cuts to the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, set out in Mr Trump's proposed 2018 budget, would damage the push to end the problem among military veterans.

The council coordinates the efforts of 19 federal agencies that play a role in preventing and ending homelessness among all Americans.

But it has made particular strides with the subset of veterans, for whom homelessness has been effectively ended in three states and dozens of communities amid a concerted effort.