USA TODAY International Edition
Trump embraces familiar theme of ‘ law and order’
Get- tough approach to policing is reprise of 2016 campaign
WASHINGTON – At the Kennedy Space Center over the weekend, President Donald Trump reflected the crises facing his administration: Acknowledging the “pain” felt by millions of Americans, he called for “healing, not hatred.”
Forty- eight hours later, as peaceful protesters were cleared from a park near the White House, the president stood in the Rose Garden, described himself as “your president of law and order” and demanded local officials “dominate the streets” – or else.
The increasingly confrontational demonstrations taking place across the USA, observers said, have given Trump an opportunity to reprise his get- tough approach to law enforcement from the 2016 campaign.
“We’re not going to solve our issues of racial inequality or feelings of economic hopelessness brought on by the coronavirus pandemic overnight, but we can stop the riots and protests with bold, definitive and unapologetic action,” said Jason Miller, who served as a senior communication adviser to
Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The president brandished that message with a high degree of drama and controversy Monday, appearing in the Rose Garden as Secret Service and police swiftly cleared an adjacent park of protesters, using smoke canisters. Trump then strolled through the park to stand outside a historic St. John’s Church vandalized the night before.
On Twitter Tuesday, Trump touted what he said was “overwhelming force” and “domination” of protesters in D. C.
Critics, including some Republicans, described the event as a “photoop” and a “stunt” designed to give the president an image of walking through Lafayette Square that was widely shared by supporters on social media. Though there has been violence and rowdiness in the same park in recent days, reporters observing the events and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said the demonstrations were calm for hours leading up to their abrupt removal.
Sen. Ben Sasse, R- Neb., who occasionally criticizes Trump, slammed the president for clearing the park and holding up a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House.
“There is no right to riot, no right to destroy others’ property and no right to throw rocks at police,” Sasse said. “But there is a fundamental – a constitutional – right to protest, and I’m against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the Word of God as a political prop.”
Trump’s display drew fierce criticism from Democrats, who noted that at the exact moment the president was describing himself as an “ally” of peaceful protesters, military police were clearing a park of protesters who were demonstrating without incident.
“Tear- gassing peaceful protesters without provocation just so that the president could pose for photos outside a church dishonors every value that faith teaches us,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
The U. S. Park Police said Tuesday it did not use tear gas, only smoke canisters and pepper balls after people ignored warnings to leave.
Trump’s speech was short on specific action: Many of the governors in states hit by violence already have activated the National Guard. But the appearance coincided with a push by the White House to ramp up the “law and order” rhetoric that Trump embraced in his campaign and his inauguration, when he vowed to end “American carnage.”
In 2016, he repeatedly described himself as “the law- and- order candidate” as the nation was wrestling with many of the same questions about police use of force and the targeting of African Americans as it is now.
“We must maintain law and order at the highest level, or we will cease to have a country,” Trump said in the summer of 2016 in an address in Virginia.
The president returned to that message in a call with governors Monday, calling them “weak” and arguing they needed to “dominate” the “radicals” and “anarchists” he said were behind the violence. Using blunt language, Trump urged the governors to crack down hard on violent protests.
White House officials said this week that the president was considering invoking an 1807 federal law that would allow him to deploy active- duty U. S. troops to respond to protests in cities. Known as the Insurrection Act, it was last used in 1992 in response to the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.
“It’s one of the tools available,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said. “Whether the president decides to pursue that, that’s his prerogative.”
Trump did not mention the act Monday.
Though Trump’s core supporters may embrace the more combative approach, outside observers noted that it carries risk. Federal and state officials traditionally seek to lower the temperature when unrest breaks out, not raise it. Washington officials reported more than 300 arrests Monday, most of them for curfew violations.
Trump has largely sidestepped the protests’ underlying issues. He said the nation is “sickened and revolted” by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis – and he promised justice for Floyd’s family – but he stopped short of addressing the systemic concerns of racism and disparate use of force that sparked the anger.
“You have an upset nation,” said James Williams, 49, who attended the demonstration Monday at Lafayette Square, along with his wife and 14year- old son. Williams, an engineer
“We must maintain law and order at the highest level, or we will cease to have a country.” President Trump in 2016
from suburban Virginia – a battleground area in the presidential election – also participated in Sunday’s protest.
“I came to see how everyone else feels about the injustice that is being done to African American people,” said Williams, who is black. The country’s law enforcement system is “not the same for African Americans as it is for white Americans,” he said.
Democratic strategist Jim Manley said he is not convinced that running on a platform of law and order is necessarily going to help Trump much. “His base will love it, but given his propensity to overreach, he will just turn off the swing voters in the suburbs,” he said.
Matt Mackowiak, a GOP political consultant, suggested Trump could bind the nation’s wounds with a formal address, perhaps from the Oval Office. Mackowiak spoke with USA TODAY before the president’s remarks Monday.
“I believe a national address would be helpful if the president spoke to the intense anger over the senseless Floyd killing and urged calm and nonviolent protest,” he said. “I believe the silent majority sympathizes with anger over the Floyd killing while they are also horrified at the rioting and looting.”
Sen. Pat Toomey, R- Pa., said some of Trump’s “tweets have not been helpful.” Sen. Susan Collins, R- Maine, said the president should highlight “the fact that we need to work on the underlying racial injustice in this country, but we need to do so in a peaceful manner.”
Administration officials indicated Monday that Trump believes he has spoken sufficiently on the topic and that his goal would be to take actions to promote security.
Through the highs and lows of his presidency, Trump’s polling has remained consistent – underscoring a conventional wisdom that most Americans have made up their mind about him. It’s not clear that Trump could “heal” a highly polarized nation, several observers said, even if he wanted to.
“This is heartbreaking. The divide in our homes and among our friends is now on the streets,” veteran GOP consultant Frank Luntz told USA TODAY before Trump’s visit to St. John’s. “But politically, I understand why he’s remained quiet. The people he needs to address don’t want to hear him, and his base is appalled at the looting.”
The unrest, much of it driven by racial tension, has prompted comparisons to 1968, when Richard Nixon ran for president in part on a “law and order” platform after race riots prompted by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University who has studied social crises, said the comparison to the 1960s works only to a point.
Americans, he noted, were also angry with President Lyndon Johnson’s handling of Vietnam. “I do think there’s an interesting echo in that Lyndon Johnson was in many ways the author of his own defeat,” Dallek said.
But Johnson had already removed himself from the race in 1968. And Trump, Dallek said, has already run a campaign focused on law and order.
“What ( Trump) really promised was a restoration of order, and what we’ve seen is really the opposite,” Dallek said.