President Donald Trump waged a war against former Vice President Joe Biden, claiming he would make the country dangerous and decimate the suburbs. It wasn't a campaign issue that Biden was campaigning on, but somehow, Trump managed to make things worse for himself.
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace went through the findings from Monmouth University Polling Institute showing that all of Trump's campaign efforts to blame Democrats for spurring criminal behavior was unsuccessful.
In January, issues like crime or "law and order" weren't even registering on the list of campaign issues. Now, thanks to Trump, it's a key issue, and he's losing on it.
A whopping 65 percent of Americans consider "law and order" to be a "major problem," but 52 percent of Americans think Biden is better suited to fix it. The same poll showed that 61 percent of Americans think Trump has made the situation "worse."
Speaking to MSNBC on Monday, conservative Bulwark founder Charlie Sykes equated it to Trump trying to claim he was a firefighter after spending four years as an arsonist.
"I will point out a New York Times/Siena poll at least shows, you know, before we dismiss this, shows that there might be still a little softness among some of the blue-collar, Biden support on this issue," said Sykes, noting a vulnerability, but concluding that it was certainly a hit for Trump."
He went on to say that Trump had an opportunity to appear as a leader and bring people together, but he decided to make it into a campaign issue and further divide Americans.
"When it goes into Kenosha it turns it into a prop when he begins to justify and defend vigilante action," said Sykes. "He is a figure of chaos and division and I think that's what's really hurting him. Also, I think in the last week, what we've seen is that the focus of the campaign has shifted to these other failures. First of all, Joe Biden did address this effectively, but Donald Trump wanted this to be what we talked about, as opposed to the coronavirus, as opposed to the fires out west. And I think that as you start to see the shift of the focus of this campaign, it's going to be harder and harder for Donald Trump to use this as the way. He really did think for a while that this was going to be the wedge issue that might bring Joe Biden down, but I think he's mishandled it."
See the panel discussion below:
