One-fifth of the way through the 21st
century, Donald Trump is seemingly running to be the last
President of the Confederacy !
As Trump continues to ignore the deadly coronavirus, a massive
national crisis that has killed more than 130,000 Americans and has no end in
sight, his behavior in recent days has been marked by calls to preserve statues
of Confederate generals who took up arms against the United States and
defending their memory, even threatening to veto a must-pass defense spending
bill to do so. It's all in character for a politician whose career began with a
racist conspiracy against former President Barack Obama and who ran his 2016
campaign as a counter-cultural reaction to the country's first Black president.
President Donald Trump has also retreated to racial equivocation when his turbulent presidency before ran into trouble. Were the rest of his term not such a riot of outrage and impropriety and had he not spent his life exploiting racial fault lines for personal gain,Trump's solidifying reelection strategy -- rooted in unhealed wounds of the Civil War that ended 155 years ago -- would be more of a shock. And while it's rooted in his character and ideological core, his campaign tone is also a Hail Mary.
Trump was stripped of the motoring economy on
which he had planned to anchor his claims of a return to American greatness by
a pandemic that could have showcased the "I Alone Can Fix It"
leadership skills of which he boasted four years ago. Instead the crisis
exposed his governing method based on chaos, building alternative political
realities, ignoring science and lying repeatedly about easily provable facts.
By condemning efforts to pull down the
Confederate flag, by portraying a nation locked in a dark feudal struggle
against rampant crime, unrest and "far left fascism," Trump is not
just running the most demagogic, polarizing and race-baiting campaign in modern
American history. He is betting that the uncanny political insight that powered
his 2016 campaign will triumph again over an industry of political consultants,
antsy Republican lawmakers and media pundits who see his crushed approval
ratings and polls showing him trailing in battleground states as the throes of
a doomed campaign.
If that damages the fabric of America, so be
it. White House
refuses to denounce Confederate flag as Trump bemoans NASCAR's ban
Trump's high-risk approach flies in the face
of normally cautious institutions averse to racial reckonings that have made
their own decision to change course after in some cases concluding continued
resistance to chance is bad for business and their brands.
NASCAR, the racing circuit popular in the
conservative South, has banned the Confederate flag and stood behind one of its
few Black drivers -- provoking a searing Trump Twitter attack on Monday. The
Mississippi Legislature has passed a bill to cut the stars and bars from its state
flag. And the Washington Redskins, which have for years disputed that
their famous emblem is racist, are brainstorming for a new name --
a sign of the tsunami of change sent through the NFL after Colin Kaepernick
took a knee to protest police brutality.
But against this sudden and sharp cultural sea
change, Trump, as he has so often in a gambler's career in real estate and
entertainment, is making the counter-intuitive wager.
He is pinning his hopes for another four years
on the idea that his silent majority of voters in rural areas of swing states
such as Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as suburban swing voters, will respond
to his warnings. Trump claims that tumbling statues -- not just of Confederate
leaders -- but of more mainstream historical figures with now discredited
racial attitudes mean (White) American culture and history is under attack.
It is a strategy that exhumes some of the
nation's most sensitive political arguments, is sure to leave the last
semblances of unity shattered for whoever is the next President and could
reverberate through national politics for years to come.
Trump uses Mount
Rushmore address to rail against removal of monuments
Trump's hardening election strategy was clearly
spelled out by the way he used the July Fourth Independence Day weekend --
previously one of the few nonpartisan moments in America -- as a long running
version of the campaign rallies that have been hampered by the coronavirus.
In a fear-laden speech at Mount Rushmore, Trump portrayed
multi-racial protesters who took to the street following the killing of George
Floyd as an outburst of radical, Marxist anarchy from those who want to
"end America." In blasting a new "far left fascism that demands
absolute allegiance," he warned that those that did not speak its language
were liable to be "banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished."
In effect, Trump's line was a supercharging of
the campaign against what he said was political correctness that helped to
underpin his 2016 presidential campaign. But his dark, hyperbolic tone
strengthened the impression of an authoritarian, ultra-nationalist spirit that
is a strong component of his own politics.
Trump's speeches in South Dakota and at the
White House before the national fireworks display were artful in their way:
they contained many references to the Founders, to basic American values and to
Abraham Lincoln, as a foundation on which Trump built his argument that
American history was under attack. This allowed prominent conservative media
voices like the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the National Review to disregard how the inflammatory passage
might appear to non-Trump supporters and to praise his weekend offerings as a
brace of his greatest speeches.
"The chorus of independent media voices
understands that Mr. Trump is trying to rally the country in defense of
traditional American principles that are now under radical and unprecedented
assault," the Journal wrote in an editorial.
Fox News then took the opportunity to brand
coverage of Trump's more explosive remarks as an example of media bias --
completing the familiar cycle of Trump's base-pleasing antics.
But Trump practices an exclusionary
patriotism.
The impression left by his two speeches is that any American who disagrees with his perception of history or who thinks that the historical consequences of slavery and their legacy in a modern society need a sober reexamination is not a proper American at all. While there has been tragedy and sporadic unrest on American streets -- six children were killed in gun violence this weekend and there were 44 shootings in New York City while multiple statues have been pulled down, Trump's apocalyptic vision of life in America is not a widely recognizable one.
The impression left by his two speeches is that any American who disagrees with his perception of history or who thinks that the historical consequences of slavery and their legacy in a modern society need a sober reexamination is not a proper American at all. While there has been tragedy and sporadic unrest on American streets -- six children were killed in gun violence this weekend and there were 44 shootings in New York City while multiple statues have been pulled down, Trump's apocalyptic vision of life in America is not a widely recognizable one.
As Trump
gaslights America about coronavirus, Republicans face a critical choice
Trump might have been wiser to bask in strong
reviews from conservative media. But the President can't leave well enough
alone and often quickly puts those who defend him in an invidious spot. Soon,
he was demanding an apology from Black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace after a
drama in which racing officials said a noose was found in his team garage. The
FBI later concluded that the incident was not a hate crime directed at Wallace.
But Trump accused Wallace of perpetrating a hoax and said the stock car series was
suffering its lowest ratings ever for banning its supporters from bringing
Confederate flags to raceways.
Thus, Wallace, already in an uncomfortable and
vulnerable position -- despite strong and moving support from his fellow
drivers -- found himself dragged as an unwilling victim into Trump's race-based
political campaigning. The NASCAR driver later implored his Twitter followers
to "always deal with the hate being thrown at you with LOVE! Love over
hate every day. Love should come naturally as people are TAUGHT to hate."
He added, "Even when it's HATE from the
POTUS."
Hours later, the President inflamed yet
another racial controversy. He lashed out at the Washington Redskins
organization and Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians for mulling a name
change after years of controversy.
He claimed that the teams were so named to
recognize "STRENGTH, not weakness" and added in an ugly racist swipe
at the end of the tweet: "Indians, like Elizabeth Warren, must be very
angry right now!"
Then, in a daily press briefing, McEnany
refused to denounce the Confederate flag and insisted that Trump "has not
given an opinion one way or the other" on the NASCAR ban.
It was just another day on which the President
seemed to go out of his way to deliberately court racial controversy.
And given his depressed approval rating -- in
territory that history suggests will be difficult for him to win reelection --
and vulnerable position in swing states he only won by tiny margins over
Hillary Clinton four years ago, he appears to be taking a big risk with his
hard swing to the right and culture warrior approach.
But only four months from election day, he is
betting that he knows the motivations of his base, less affiliated Republican
and swing voters and the character of America better than anyone else.
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