Trump steps up rhetoric to drive supporters to polls
But advisers have warned that focus on racial rancour could turn off swathes of voters
NEW YORK: President Donald Trump is wielding America’s racial tensions as a re-election weapon, fiercely denouncing the racial justice movement on a near-daily basis with language stoking white resentment and aiming to drive his supporters to the polls.
The incendiary discourse is alarming many in his own party and running contrary to the advice of some in his inner circle, who believe that it risks alienating independent and suburban voters. It’s a pattern that harks back to cultural divisions Trump similarly exploited in his victorious 2016 campaign.
Chairperson of the Department of African-American studies at Princeton University, Eddie Glaude, said: “It’s not about who is the object of the derision or the vitriol. The actual issue is understanding the appeal to white resentment and white fear. It’s all rooted in this panic about the place of white people in this new America.”
Although Trump has long aired racially divisive language and grievances in the public sphere, his willingness to do so from behind the presidential seal – and on his Twitter account – has reached a breakneck pace in recent days as the nation grapples with racial injustice.
The president tweeted – and later deleted – a video of a supporter yelling “white power”.
Most notably, he has engaged in a full-throated defence of the Confederate legacy, which he at times has cloaked within tributes to the Founding Fathers, including during a pair of high-profile Fourth of July weekend speeches.
Trump said on Friday at the base of Mount Rushmore: “Those who seek to erase our heritage want Americans to forget our pride and our great dignity, so that we can no longer understand ourselves or America’s destiny. In toppling the heroes of 1776, they seek to dissolve the bonds of love and loyalty that we feel for our country, and that we feel for each other. Their goal is not a better America; their goal is the end of America.”
In defending Thomas Jefferson and George Washington that night, Trump did not mention the Confederacy. Instead, he painted racial justice demonstrators with a broad brush that made no distinction between the many who oppose honouring the Confederacy and the relative few who question celebrating Founders who owned slaves.
But Trump has repeatedly called for the preservation of statues of the Confederacy and the names of its generals on military bases, all assailed in the protests that have swept from coast to coast in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd.
His comments are an apparent descendant, a half-century later, of Richard Nixon’s coded outreach to white voters known as the Southern Strategy. Trump himself has embraced Nixon’s phrase “the Silent Majority” to describe his own supporters.
By all accounts, the president’s actions are, at times, born of impulse and an instinctive reaction to what he sees on TV. However, according to current and former Trump campaign officials, his overarching strategy is an appeal to white voters, some of them racist and some who fear being left behind by a government seemingly consumed with helping others. The officials commented only on condition of anonymity.
The belief is that his appeals will generate enthusiasm among the same disaffected white voters who made up the president’s base of supporters four years ago.
But many in Trump’s orbit are sounding the alarm that 2020 is not 2016.
White House advisers Kellyanne Conway and Jared Kushner, according to the officials, have both warned that some of the racist rhetoric, including the use of China-blaming “kung flu” to describe the Covid-19 pandemic, could turn off swathes of voters. And some believe there was more of an audience for inflammatory rhetoric about immigration four years ago, particularly as polls show the Black Lives Matter movement gaining widespread support.
A former Trump campaign adviser, Sam Nunberg, said: “The 2016 debate about immigration was about the future of sovereignty, the American worker, and our culture.
“The issues that involve race now are completely different.
“It’s not easy to conflate people who want to tear down the statues of the Confederacy and the few who want to get George Washington.
“I don’t think it’s a winning argument in a time of a pandemic. This doesn’t affect people’s daily lives. This is a dumb issue to fight.”
Four months before Election Day, Republicans are nervously watching polls that show Trump slipping behind his Democratic rival Joe Biden. They have grown increasingly worried that his focus on racial rancour could force GOP senators locked in tough campaigns to distance themselves from their party’s president.
Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who advised Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential bid, said: “Defending the Confederacy and racial dog whistles is not going to help win the suburbs. He is solely focused on a small part of his base when he should be looking to grow his support.”
“If Joe Biden proposed tearing down Mount Rushmore, that would be a huge opening for Trump. But Biden is not doing that.”
Senator John Thune said GOP candidates “need to do what they need to do to win. And in some states, he will be a benefit in some parts of the country. In other parts of the country, less so”.
The Trump campaign dismisses accusations of racism.
Campaign spokesperson Ken Farnaso said: “President Trump’s Mount Rushmore address was a defining speech highlighting America’s highest ideals of freedom and individual liberty. He both educated citizens on our shared history and pushed for a more united front combating those who want to create chaos.”
Democrats have charged that the president’s recent rhetoric is consistent with Trump’s history, including his call in the 1980s for the death penalty for black teenagers later exonerated for the rape of a jogger in Central Park and for questioning whether the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was born in the US.
The Biden campaign’s national press secretary, TJ Ducklo, said: “We are beyond dog whistles with this president.
“Donald Trump openly embraces racist rhetoric and sends blatant signals of support for the causes of white supremacists – and he does it from the highest office in the land.” |
The issues that involve race now are completely different
Sam Nunberg FORMER ADVISER