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Trump: USA will soon have a cure for covid-19 0:17
(CNN) - The deeper the change in the United States, the more President Donald Trump plunges into positions that even some of his natural allies have recently abandoned.
Defending the memory of the Confederate generals, proudly touring the country without wearing a mask and threatening to send troops to counter protesters in Seattle, Trump solidified his reelection speech Thursday as a bulwark that goes against a cultural transformation.
In essence, he is arguing that there is something fundamentally anti-American and liberal about finally discarding the symbols and images of the Civil War, believing that systemic racism stains the police force or covering up to prevent the spread of a deadly virus that it is trying to make disappear. .
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The president's conduct is consistent with a lifetime of going against the crowd and his drive to use the racial and cultural juncture for his own benefit. At a time when much of the country, including many instinctively conservative people and institutions, are engaged in a racial trial, he is apparently betting that his positions will ignite and expand his political base and lead to a resounding victory in November.
As he did with his campaign slogan "Make America Great Again," Trump implicitly invokes an idealized past vision of a nation untainted by political correctness, where white conservative values were dominant, seemingly incompatible with an increasingly diverse country. . At the same time, it spreads an alternate reality that the pandemic is over, despite growing cases in many states, to convince voters that the strong economy that they used as their primary reelection argument is on its way back.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel announced Thursday that Trump will accept the nomination in a 15,000-person arena in Jacksonville, Florida, not Charlotte, North Carolina, as planned, after the president questioned the guidelines for social estrangement that the Democratic governor of the state of Tar Heel imposed on the celebration he wanted.
The resumption of the president's campaign events, which will return to the stage in Tulsa, Oklahoma, next week, is crucial to bringing this dual strategy home. But reality intrudes; attendees must accept a disclaimer that they will not sue the Trump campaign if they contract coronavirus in a crowded crowd. In itself, the event will be a massive symbolic repudiation of the idea that there is any reason for Americans to change their behaviors and attitudes in the face of two massive national crises.
But as the president strengthens his cultural warfare positions, he lines up his own generals, some Republican senators, executives who run sports leagues, and Americans who tell pollsters that they are uncomfortable with their handling of the pandemic and the aftermath of death. by George Floyd.
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Military leaders were surprised by Trump's refusal to change the name of bases named by Confederate generals, who took up arms against the United States in a civil war fought to preserve slavery. Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, now says he was wrong to let himself be dragged into Trump's famous photo shoot after the strong dispersal of peaceful protesters outside the White House last week.
NASCAR, the auto racing circuit seen as a stronghold of southern values, has banned the Confederate flag from its tracks in the latest blinding move to tackle a national outpouring of Floyd's death. The NFL apologized to its own black players, whom Trump criticized for kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality.
Even some Republican senators, on whose support Trump can usually depend without even asking, broke with the president in the controversy over the Confederate symbols. Some local politicians in various conservative strongholds in the south are moving on the subject of Confederate monuments. And unlike Trump, most Republican senators walk the Capitol wearing masks to help reduce transmission of the new coronavirus, obeying government advice from experts that the president has made the political decision to weaken.
Trump also insists that there is no systemic racism in the police, as he establishes a "law and order" platform that he believes is attractive to a broader group than just its political base. He said Thursday during a trip to Texas that National Guard troops cut off protesters in Washington "like a knife in the butter" and renewed his promise to "dominate" the streets.
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The president, with one eye on his base, also seemed to argue that the problem of racism and discrimination faced by people of color was almost the same as that raised by people who denounce him.
"We have to work together to confront bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear, but we will not progress or heal wounds by falsely labeling tens of millions of decent Americans as racist or bigoted," Trump said.
Trump seeks to ignite political reaction
Trump's instincts are that the "forgotten Americans" who make up his base, and much more, are angry and alienated by the current rate of change and the restrictions imposed by governments on their activities during the pandemic. He is deliberately pitting older white and conservative Americans who subscribe to what they might call "traditional values" against the country's youngest, most diverse and most liberal sector, which shocked to the bottom by beating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election .
It is not the first time that the president has spoken in favor of preserving the Confederate images, he did so after the controversy over his racially charged comments about the protests in Charlottesville several years ago, in defense of supporters in the south who believe that Such monuments are quintessential icons of Southern heritage.
But three years later, Trump seems to be overcome by the change that is breaking out around him, and what is at stake in his strategy is increasingly higher. As polls show that he is standing badly in front of Democratic candidate Joe Biden ahead of the November election, it appears that the chances increase that the president is navigating into political terrain that cannot provide a basis for his reelection. His decision to purely serve his base in more than three years in power faces his most acute test: failure to expand his support may make a second term impossible.
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But the president sticks to his task, in the apparent belief that his rhetoric is seen very differently outside of the elite bubbles on the east coast. And it's focusing on Democratic vulnerabilities, for example, using police rollback to portray Democrats as radicals outside of the American mainstream.
Trump puts Republican senators in a difficult situation
Throughout Thursday, the president's actions reflected a politician who is convinced he has taken advantage of the nation's pulse, which he says the media elites have ignored, despite current polls suggesting he may have done a losing bet and it's actually reducing your support.
"My administration will not even consider renaming these magnificent and legendary military installations," Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday, characteristically igniting a culture war skirmish that spanned the entire day. The president's argument that removing the names of the Civil War generals would be disrespectful to the troops who trained at those bases and then went to fight and die in foreign wars makes little logical sense.
But it allows him to pose as the guardian of conservative southern values, waging political disputes with elite establishment institutions and opinion-formers, a dynamic he always seeks to create and has been successful in the past.
The president's latest rampage is unpleasant for many Republican senators, especially those already facing tough reelection fights and fear of being dragged down by an increasingly unpopular president, who fell to a 38% approval rating in a poll. CNN this week.
A Republican-led Senate committee voted against Trump's wishes Thursday to support an amendment written by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to remove the names of Confederate leaders from military bases, generating a threat to veto at the White House.
"There is always a story we don't want to forget," said Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota who is on the Senate Armed Services Commission and supports the plan. "In this regard, I agree with the President that we do not want to forget our history ... but at the same time, that does not mean that we should continue on those bases with the names of the people who fought against our country."
The coming months, in light of the extraordinary calculations that many white Americans have on race, perhaps for the first time, will show whether Trump's strategies will be as successful as they were four years ago. And that leads to one more question, a moral question, about whether a president, the nation's chief ruler, should work to reconcile national aspirations for equality rather than stand in the way for his own political reasons.
Donald trump