5 takeaways from Trump’s Kenosha trip
Event was blessedly peaceful, but also political as president attacked Democrats
One local activist described it to a TV reporter as a “small circus.”
Which is better than a small “firestorm.”
Here are five takeaways from President Donald Trump’s Tuesday visit to Kenosha:
Peace prevailed
A visit by a lightning-rod president during a lightning-rod presidential campaign to the scene of two horrific shootings and violent unrest was accomplished peacefully while Trump was here. Pro-Trump and anti-Trump people traded insults and opinions, but not blows.
“There’s been zero problem (on his visit) … I feel so safe,” Trump said.
Politics also prevailed
This presidential visit, in a state at the epicenter of the presidential race, was loaded with politics. Democrats assailed Trump for coming. The elected officials who appeared with him — and showered him with praise — were fellow Republicans. Much of the visit was aimed at giving Trump credit for an end to the violent unrest in Kenosha, a claim that has been challenged by fact-checkers. Attacks on Democrats were plentiful.
“It’s all Democrats! Everything’s Democrat! All these problems are Democrat cities,” Trump said, referring to unrest in America.
The president did not mention his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, by name.
What the president didn’t want to talk about
Trump steered clear Tuesday of discussing Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-yearold from Illinois who is charged with shooting three protesters, after appearing to defend Rittenhouse on Monday.
He didn’t discuss armed counterprotesters, a subject Republican members of Congress from Wisconsin have also given a wide berth.
Trump said relatively little about Jacob Blake, the victim of the police shooting that sparked the unrest. When asked if he has anything to say to Blake’s family, Trump said, “I feel terribly for anybody that goes through that. As you know, it’s under investigation … I hope they come up with the right answer. It’s a complicated subject.”
The president deflected a question from a reporter about the issues raised by peaceful protesters, saying to the reporter, “You just keeping getting back to the opposite subject. We should talk about the kind of violence we’ve seen in Portland and here.”
What the president wanted to talk about
Violent protest and turmoil in cities run by Democrats. Trump also used his visit to offer an extended defense of law enforcement, rejecting the idea of “systemic” problems or the need for “structural change.”
“You can have 10,000 great jobs ... and then you have one bad apple or something that happens is bad, then that’s the nightly news for three weeks. That’s all they talk about,” said Trump.
“(People) want to see law and order … They want the police to be police,” said Trump, who argued that cases of police violence were often the result of officers “choking” in high-pressure situations. “Under this tremendous pressure, they don’t handle it well. They call it choking, and it happens.”
In an interview Monday with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, the president said police officers “choke just like in a golf tournament. They miss a 3-foot putt.”
The president’s visit was another striking illustration that Democrats and Republicans are focused on very different aspects of the same events that have roiled the nation and see those events through a very different lens.
When will the Democratic ticket visit Wisconsin?
This was Trump’s second visit to Wisconsin in two weeks. During Tuesday’s visit, the White House announced that Vice President Mike Pence will visit La Crosse on Labor Day. Pence visited the state two weeks ago.
The keen personal attention the Republican ticket is paying to Wisconsin increases the political pressure on Democrat Joe Biden, who did not travel to Milwaukee for the Democratic National Convention due to the pandemic. Biden is just starting to go out on the campaign trail, but the political imperative for him to come to Wisconsin, a state that 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton neglected to visit, is clear. Expect a visit soon.
“Under this tremendous pressure, they don’t handle it well. They call it choking, and it happens.” ... “You can have 10,000 great jobs ... and then you have one bad apple or something that happens is bad, then that’s the nightly news for three weeks.”