Trump outplays Dems again in game of chants
PRESIDENTS, like most politicians, don’t apologize. They don’t admit mistakes, either. President Trump just did both. By saying he “disagreed with” and “wasn’t happy” with the audience chants of “send her back” at his Wednesday rally, Trump effectively walked back his own tweet that went too far. On Sunday, he had criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar and three other rookie Democrats by saying they should “go back” to their home countries.
The president took an enormous media and political pounding for those words, and Democrats in the House voted to condemn his comments. Some Republicans also complained, as did daughter Ivanka Trump, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Although I talked to the president about his initial comments and don’t believe he had any racial intent, I did argue that “go back” carries painful historic baggage among AfricanAmericans and immigrants. “Go back” to Africa or Ireland or Italy or Israel or Mexico was rarely said without contempt.
Trump did not mention his own words Thursday, but his disavowal of the near-identical chants made his intent clear. He used two brief interactions with reporters to repeatedly express his unhappiness, making the chants a proxy for his own retreat without having to express personal regret or even directly criticize the rally audience. Such are the perks of being president.
Yet none of this is to suggest Trump is softening his harsh criticism of Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, some of which he repeated Thursday. His assertion that they are so radical as to be anti-American and anti-Israel is resonating even among some Dems, and he sees it as a political winner.
As he said to me Tuesday, “I just feel these people hate our country. And I think people understand that we want people who love our country and are capable of loving our country.”
Indeed, Omar, whom I regard as an unrepentant anti-Semite, further cemented her reputation by introducing legislation Thursday making it legal to organize boycotts against Israel. Predictably, she drew comparisons of the Jewish state to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa.
Don’t expect more than a peep out of dissenting Dems. They’re afraid of her and of the shocking anti-Israel sentiment on the left.
Trump, meanwhile, aims to make The Squad, as they call themselves, the face of the opposition and contrast his economic and security policies with their socialist-inspired gibberish. Ironically, the “go back” demand had helped Trump in that regard because Dems rallied to defend the four, adding to their prominence.
But his problem was that initial polls showed swing voters did not like the president’s language and the chants created further concern, so he had to separate the wheat from the chaff. Now that he has, expect him to keep pounding away at Omar & Co on a near-daily basis.
While there is a long way to go until the 2020 election, Trump’s strategy makes sense, in part because the media that hates him is actually helping to raise the profile of the rookies. They appear to get more attention than the score of presidential candidates combined, making it all the more difficult for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to get them to toe the party line. In turn, her inability to enforce discipline makes her look weak.
And it’s more than just appearances. A new poll shows that while the public at large generally has unfavorable views of The Squad, all four are very popular among Democratic voters.
Ocasio-Cortez is tops, with 59 percent favorable against just 19 percent unfavorable, Tlaib is at 43/13, Omar at 44/15 and Pressley at 35/10, according to the Economist/YouGov survey.
Those approval numbers indicate that the four are building a base within the party and that the feud is not as one-sided as Pelosi claims. It’s also worth noting that the four support impeaching the president, while Pelosi does not.
All of which means that, for now at least, Trump has removed a distraction he created and has the Dems right where he wants them: fighting each other.