Trump’s amplifying of racism unnerves GOP
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination, crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement Friday night at Mount Rushmore, has unnerved Republicans who have long enabled him but now fear losing power and forever associating their party with his racial animus.
Although amplifying racism and stoking culture wars have been mainstays of Trump’s public identity for decades, they have been particularly pronounced this summer as the president has reacted to the national reckoning over systemic discrimination by seeking to weaponize the anger and resentment of some white Americans for his own political gain.
Trump has left little doubt through his utterances the past few weeks that he sees himself not only as the Republican standard-bearer, but as leader of a modern grievance movement animated by civic strife and marked by calls for “white power,” the phrase chanted by one of his supporters in a video the president shared last weekend on Twitter. He later deleted the video but did not disavow its message.
Trump put his strategy to resuscitate his troubled reelection campaign by galvanizing white supporters on display Friday night under the chiseled granite gaze of four past presidents memorialized in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He celebrated Independence Day with a dystopian speech in which he excoriated racial justice protesters as “evil” representatives of a “new far-left fascism” whose ultimate goal is “the end of America.”
“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children,” Trump said to boos from a packed crowd of supporters. “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”
Over the years, some Republicans have struggled to navigate Trump’s race baiting and, at times, outright racism, while others have rallied behind him.
Bursts of indignation and frustration come and go, but have never resulted in a complete GOP break with the president. Trump’s recent moves are again putting Republican officeholders onto risky political terrain.
On Friday night at Mount Rushmore, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., a member of the party’s leadership, and other top Republicans were seen applauding as Trump spoke.
Trump’s repeated championing of monuments, memorials and military bases honoring Confederate leaders has run up against the tide of modernity and a weary electorate that polls show overwhelmingly support the Black Lives Matter movement — a slogan that Trump said would be “a symbol of hate” if painted on Fifth Avenue in New York.
In Richmond, Va., the former capital of the Confederacy, a massive statue of Stonewall Jackson was dismantled to the cheers of onlookers and the ringing of church bells last week, and even in Mississippi, the Legislature voted to remove the Confederate battle emblem from its state flag.
On Capitol Hill, some Republicans fret — mostly privately to avoid his wrath — that Trump’s fixation on racial and other cultural issues leaves their party running against the currents of change. Coupled with the coronavirus pandemic and related economic crisis, these Republicans fear he is not only seriously impairing his reelection chances, but also jeopardizing the GOP Senate majority and its strength in the House.
“The Senate incumbent candidates are not taking the bait and are staying as far away from this as they can,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican operative and chief strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has invested heavily in keeping GOP control of the Senate.
“The problem is this is no longer just Trump’s Twitter feed. It’s expanded to the podium, and that makes it more and more difficult for these campaigns.”
Trump has all but ignored the outcry and remains convinced that following his own instincts on race and channeling the grievances of his core base of white voters will carry him to victory against former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to a White House official and an outside Trump adviser who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
“It’s the 2016 campaign all over again, when we had the Muslim ban and the wall, just add Confederate statues,” the outside adviser said.
Trump allies insist president’s words and actions are not racist, but rather attentive to his core voters.
“President Trump has been more exposed to Black people, Black leaders and Black culture than most previous presidents,” said Armstrong Williams, a longtime adviser to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. “He doesn’t see the implications of his tweets in the way that his critics do. He just loves his supporters.”
Williams added, “This is someone who spoke at length on the phone to Don King on election night — I was with Trump when he took the call. This is someone who welcomed Kanye West at the White House. That’s who Trump is.”
Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said “the mainstream media is never going to give the president the credit he deserves, in terms of his optimism and his belief in the American spirit.”
He added, “There is a backlash against this counterculture, this cancel culture, and Americans are proud we’re a beacon for freedom.”