On Tuesday, the right-wing host framed his most overt friendly-fire attack yet with the previous night's interview of Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana, whom Carlson painted as the archetypally "weak" Republican who doesn't "believe in anything."
"As the mob burned cities and shot police officers, Braun used his power in the U.S. Senate to punish local police," Carlson said.
If elected officials don't change, Carlson warned, Republicans "at all levels" could lose in the fall. And if they do, he said, "there will be profound consequences for you" — meaning his overwhelmingly white audience.
"People who supported Donald Trump will be punished, there's absolutely no question about that," the host said. "There's never been an American political party as radical and as angry as the Democrats are now."
Carlson raised concerns last week that Trump was on pace for a loss in November and has turned up the heat since then, laying out his own vision of what the party should look like.
"Instead of improving the lives of their voters, the party feeds them a steady diet of mindless symbolic victories, partisan junk food designed to make them feel full even as they waste away," he said.
"Who cares how many Benghazi hearings we have? We're supposed to care — why should we? How did Peter Strzok's text messages become more important than saving American jobs from foreign nationals who are taking them? It is lunacy. We fall for it every time," the Fox News host said.
"And to the extent this show has participated in it, we apologize with deepest sincerity," he added.
GOP voters must now force elected officials to change paths, Carlson declared, reassuring his audience that Republican officeholders are "not, by and large, evil people."
"Despite the way they talk, they're not secretly working for the other side. Most of them are just empty, sad people, and politics is the way they fill the yawning void inside where a personal life should be," Carlson said.
"They're pleasers," he continued. "They're searching for the approval of strangers. Our job is to give them clear instructions about what we want. We do that by voting and by making noise."
Carlson currently commands the most-watched platform in cable news, pulling a nightly average of 4.331 million viewers, according to the most recent data from Nielsen Media Research.
President Trump, who famously keeps a close watch on ratings, viewing them as a type of political poll, has allegedly told associates that he "regrets" taking son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner's advice — such as on criminal justice reform — and has instead resolved to hew to his instincts, Axios reports.
One source said that Trump would accept "no more of Jared's woke s***," which according to Axios the president believes has damaged him politically.
But outside of Trump, Kushner still wields the most power in the White House and the campaign.
Axios also points out that the president takes Carlson's analysis seriously. In mid-June, Carlson reamed out Kushner for advocating judicial reform, which the host viewed as the wrong political path for Trump.
"In 2016, Donald Trump ran as a law-and-order candidate because he meant it," Carlson said at the time. "And his views remain fundamentally unchanged today. But the president's famously sharp instincts, the ones that won him the presidency almost four years ago, have been since subverted at every level by Jared Kushner."
President Donald Trump's campaign is promoting a new shirt that features an eagle clutching a shield with the American flag and ribbon displaying his campaign. The Nazi Reichsadler is an eagle clutching a shield with a swastika.
While eagles have been used since the Roman Empire to signify power, the only eagles clutching a shield in their feet appear on Nazi memorabilia and Trump's campaign shirt.
It's a fact that didn't go unnoticed by those on Twitter, Wednesday. Specifically, the Republican-run Lincoln Project posted the images together, saying, "Come on."
One person tried to claim that it was similar to the American symbol, which was specifically designed with plenty of symbolism in mind. In the left foot, the eagle is gently holding an olive branch, symbolizing peace. In its right foot are 13 arrows, with the claws out, to symbolize strength. In its mouth, the eagle is holding a banner with E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one).
Everything else Donald Trump was going to run on this summer and fall has evaporated. The "booming" economy? (Which he inherited from Barack Obama in the first place.) The U.S. has the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression and the situation is about to get exponentially worse as unemployment benefits expire. And no, "reopening" is not a solution, since the data makes clear that consumers have little interest in shopping or eating out during a pandemic.
And then there was Trump's plan to hold big rallies to make himself look like he's got momentum, while Joe Biden campaigns in responsible ways that don't spread the coronavirus. Not only was that plan sociopathic, it's also not working. Trump's big comeback rally in Tulsa was a hilarious failure, with only a third of the arena filled. Now Trump has canceled a rally in Alabama, citing coronavirus fears. It's just as likely that the campaign was scared of more empty seats — even some of his most ardent followers would rather root for him at home rather than risk getting sick.
Trump's efforts to paint Biden as too old and out of it to do a job as difficult as being president? Well, in the face of reports that Trump did nothing to push back against Russia paying Afghan fighters to kill American soldiers, the only "defense" of Trump is that he's either too lazy or too illiterate to pay attention to his intelligence briefings. For a 74-year-old man trying to argue he's sharper than his slightly older opponent, having his press secretary argue that Trump does too know how to read is arguably not a great look.
As for the coronavirus itself, Trump is so hostile to any efforts to meaningfully fight the disease that people have started to wonder, only half-facetiously, whether he's campaigning on a pro-coronavirus agenda.
So now Trump, aided as usual by the massive propaganda apparatus at Fox News, is pushing all his chips on the bet that just enough voters in swing states will disregard all these failures, so long as he keeps escalating the racism. There's no real evidence this will work — his efforts to whip up racist hysterics about a "caravan" that was "invading" the U.S. in the fall of 2018 (it was really a small group of Central American refugees fleeing from violence) did nothing to prevent the Democrats' big midterm win — but Trump is a dull-witted man with few real ideas. Racism is all he has.
And if racism isn't working yet, Trump clearly thinks that piling on more and more of it will finally turn the tide.
On Tuesday night alone, Trump — who clearly isn't sleeping much, based on his Twitter patterns — went buck-wild with the overt racism.
Around 9 p.m., Trump tweeted that at "the request of many great Americans who live in the Suburbs" he is "studying" (ha) "the AFFH housing regulation that is having a devastating impact on these once thriving Suburban areas."
Trump's administration has already put a pause on enforcing some Obama-era rules to desegregate housing, even though evidence shows that there continue to be dramatic levels of discrimination against Black people seeking homes to rent or buy. The administration has made some noises to make these moves somehow sound not-racist, but Trump's unsubtle tweeting suggests he sees the racism as a selling point. His theory, one supposes, is that white voters will thrill to hear he's working to keep Black people from moving into their neighborhoods.
Later that night, Trump threatened to defund the entire U.S. military if the Senate tries to rename military bases that currently sport the names of Confederate military leaders. Again, not exactly subtle. These bases should never have been named for traitors who took up arms against the U.S. government and killed hundreds of thousands of patriotic American soldiers in the name of white supremacy. With this threat, Trump is pretty clearly saying that racism matters more than patriotism, which is turning out to be a pattern with him.
There are reports that some members of Trump's staff think that going full-on white supremacist is a bad look — anonymous White House staffers recently told reporters that they spent three hours trying to get Trump to take down a tweet featuring that infamous video clip of golf-cart-riding supporters shouting "white power" — but the biggest hosts at Fox News think this ramped-up racism is a winning strategy for their orange reality-TV president.
Basically, the message coming from Fox News in recent days has been to threaten the network's older white viewers with the prospect that a failure to vote Republican might mean, heaven forbid, that the forces of anti-racism will triumph. Apparently, Fox News hosts believe nothing could be more terrifying to their viewers than the possibility that they might have to live near Black people, or treat them with respect.
"If Biden wins," Laura Ingraham announced on Fox News Tuesday night, "you'll be sending money to Washington so Pelosi and the squad can commission statues of their new heroes of the left. Like, I don't know, Colin Kaepernick and Stacey Abrams."
The context of this snark, of course, is the ongoing Trump-fueled controversy over Black Lives Matter activists demanding the removal of statues celebrating historical figures, mostly Confederate military leaders, who are viewed as white supremacists, as well as the fight over renaming military bases, maybe to honor people who didn't commit treason. In Ingraham's world, statues honoring Black people who have fought against racism, often at great personal cost, would be preposterous, but statues honoring white supremacists are "what makes this country so great."
Similarly, Fox News host Tucker Carlson dug into an apocalyptic racist fantasy Tuesday night, proclaiming that "Americans who want to live as they did just 15 years ago, quietly, productively, without being harassed and harangued by self-righteous lunatics" are going to "need a protector," and that "protector must be the Republican Party."
There are, of course, no reports of "self-righteous lunatics" going into the homes of quiet, productive people to harangue them. That's just a fantasy Carlson is spinning to justify conservatives' pangs of guilt when they turn on the news and see people who are angry about racism or sexism or other social ills that sofa-bound right-wingers would rather not interrogate. The option to turn the TV off and live in ignorance is always there, but Carlson wants his audience to feel aggrieved and play the victims.
The scary thing here is that of course there's a well-known Fox News-to-Trump feedback loop. The president gets himself all worked up by imbibing Fox News' racial grievance politics, and then turns around and pours his racist vitriol out on Twitter and into speeches. Then the Fox News crew takes their cues from Trump and turns up the racism even more.
Given the Trump campaign's desperate need to distract from the economic collapse, the pandemic and the fact that Trump's Russian buddies reportedly paid bounties for the lives of American soldiers, this feedback loop is only going to get worse. Their bag of tricks is running out, and racism is all Trump and his media allies have left. It's four months and two days until the election and in that time, we can expect the white supremacist demagoguery to escalate day by day. Considering what a powder keg this country already is, it's a downright terrifying situation.
I’ve bored family and friends with this story for years. Now it’s your turn.
A long time ago, I was living in a New York apartment across from a park which, along with its bocce and handball courts, featured a well-worn, dusty baseball field. One spring, the city decided to re-sod it. They brought in rolls of new, luscious, emerald green turf that when unfurled brightened the whole block.
One thing: the parks department posted signs that warned everyone not to walk on it quite yet, that it would take a little time for the sod roots to bind to the soil. Just wait a bit, they said, and then we’d have this beautiful, restored little piece of parkland.
You probably know what happened. A few people refused to follow the signs. They pushed over chicken wire barriers to tromp around, walk their dogs, and basically destroyed the new grass before it had a chance to take hold. The city never came back to try again—why bother?
I’ve thought of this little story several times over the last few weeks, a tiny microcosm from the past for the present, as I’ve watched some of the people in my neighborhood refuse to wear masks or observe social distancing. They’re heedless and unthinking; if young, they believe themselves invincible, without a care about what their recklessness could do to them and the rest of us. Freedom!
Overall, after some initial missteps, here in New York State we’ve had excellent results from self-isolating, mask wearing and the other precautions the state and our communities have ordered. State and local leadership has done a decent job and after weeks of illness, our disease and death rates now are very low. Our medical and emergency professionals have been exceptional. Every worker who has braved hazards to preserve essential services should be valued, applauded and at all times protected.
So now that we’ve achieved some stability around here, I’m worried, as are many others, that the disease might ramp up again in these parts—not just because we have our own share of yahoos who won’t take precautions but because the levels now are skyrocketing out of control across the south and west, faster and further than anticipated. On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted we could soon have as many as 100,000 new cases a day.
Most of the current most highly infected are red states which reopened too soon, sycophantically following the lead of our Dissembler-in-Chief, Donald Trump, a man who places his reelection above the nation’s health and safety, as well as the governors and legislators who fell into lockstep behind him—even going so far, in such states as Florida and Texas, as to manipulate or attempt to conceal data.
So now there are 128,000 US dead, 2.64 million confirmed cases that we know of, and 45.5 million unemployed, victims not just of a virus but of ineptitude, duplicity and ideology. Herein lies a horror tale, perhaps best described by columnist Paul Krugman at The New York Times. “The question… isn’t why ‘America’ has failed to deal effectively with the pandemic, he writes. “It’s why the G.O.P. has in effect allied itself with the coronavirus…
… [T]hey pushed for premature reopening because they wanted things to return to what they seemed to be back in February. Indeed, just a few days ago the same Trump officials who initially assured us that Covid-19 was no big deal were out there dismissing the risks of a second wave.
Krugman further suggests that the Republican party regards COVID as they do climate change: “… it doesn’t want you to fear impersonal threats that require an effective policy response, not to mention inconveniences like wearing face masks; it wants you to be afraid of people you can hate — people of a different race or supercilious liberals.
So instead of dealing with Covid-19, Republican leaders and right-wing media figures have tried to make the pandemic into the kind of threat they want to talk about. It’s ‘kung flu,’ foisted on us by villainous Chinese. Or it’s a hoax perpetrated by the ‘medical deep state,’ which is just looking for a way to hurt Trump.
The degree of the delusion staggers. Fueled by politics and self-interest, Trump and Pence ignore the facts and keep insisting that all is going well, although Pence, at least, is now advocating wearing a mask, as are other Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. They at last seem to be waking up to the news that masks save lives—or more likely they saw the latest polls or that Goldman Sachs report that face coverings could save five percent of the GDP.
Nonetheless, the president insists the economy is great, he’s great and if it wasn’t for all that testing, we wouldn’t have so much of this awful disease—a stroke of logical genius similar to the person who can’t believe he’s overdrawn at the bank because he still has checks.
The depths of pettiness to which he and his cohort will go in their attempts to steal, distract and deceive remain breathtaking—from the distribution of medical equipment along partisan lines and allowing the distribution of faulty or inadequate testing to the sight of Trump campaign staff stripping social distancing stickers from the seats at that arena in Tulsa where the president’s misbegotten rally took place.
The Washington Post reported, “As part of its safety plan, arena management had purchased 12,000 do-not-sit stickers for Trump’s rally, intended to keep people apart by leaving open seats between attendees. On the day of the rally, event staff had already affixed them on nearly every other seat in the arena when Trump’s campaign told event management to stop and then began removing the stickers, hours before the president’s arrival…”
All of this continues to be urged on by the likes of Fox News, professional deniers who for the most part ply the party line to such a degree that as media columnist Margaret Sullivan notes, “Three serious research efforts have put numerical weight—yes, data-driven evidence—behind what many suspected all along: Americans who relied on Fox News, or similar right-wing sources, were duped as the coronavirusbegan its deadly spread. Dangerously duped...
For too long, many devotees of most right-wing news decided they didn’t need to stay home. Others absorbed the idea that wearing a protective mask was an act of left-leaning partisanship.
Conversely, to them, not wearing a mask becomes equally political. A study from the University of Montana, cited in Psychology Today, finds, that because “conservatives typically don’t support government restrictions, they are motivated to diminish the seriousness of the threat. If they took the threat more seriously, they would have to consider governmental measures that are incompatible with their beliefs.”
That said, “The investigators' findings also suggest that with increasing experiences and impacts of coronavirus, politically ideology matters less in assessing the threat of the virus.” No kidding. It’s another explanation as to why in such 2016 Trump states as Florida, Arizona and Texas, where the virus now is raging, Republican governors are changing their tune when it comes to public safety.
As former Daily Show host Jon Stewart said on The View Monday, “Have you been in operating rooms? Surgeons wear masks, not because they listen to NPR and drive Volvos—they wear masks because that’s more sanitary."
God willing, someday this pandemic may end. But prepare for another political fight when we finally get a vaccine. A May CNN poll found that “one third of Americans said they would not try to get vaccinated against Covid, even if the vaccine is widely available and low cost.” Good grief.
Have a safe and sane Fourth of July. Wear your damn mask.
The bizarre “conservative” idea of “freedom” has struck again.
Margaret Sullivan reported in the Washington Post on a new study that shows what we all intuited: people who get their news from Fox and right-wing hate radio—both promoting the idea that the economy is more important than your health—are less likely to understand the reality of COVID-19 and therefore more likely to get sick and cause themselves and others to die.
This bizarre dynamic of putting profits over public health has played over and over again throughout the years.
In the 1960s, when I was a teenager, a friend drove his car into a ditch in rural northern Michigan. Although he couldn’t have been going more than 20 or 30 miles an hour, when we found his car the next morning, he was impaled on the steering column and long dead. His car had not been equipped with seat belts—they weren’t standard then.
Ralph Nader took on the auto industry on the lack of seat belts and other “unsafe at any speed” aspects of the American car industry in 1965, and conservatives set up a howl heard from coast to coast. Lewis Powell cited Nader in his infamous 1971 memo, saying that Nader’s efforts were “aimed at smashing utterly… corporate power” because, Powell said, Nader “thinks, and says quite bluntly, that a great many corporate executives belong in prison.”
When a national seat belt law was being debated in 1967 (and passed in 1968), there were protests all across the nation, with people refusing to wear them “on principle” and ending up dead in higher proportion to those who buckled up. (The movement persists to this day.)
In the 1970s, it was returnable bottles. I lived in Michigan, the fourth state to pass a bottle deposit law, and I remember well the pitched political battles around the issue, with conservatives asserting it was treason, a betrayal of America’s founding principles, to charge a 10 cent deposit on beer cans and soda bottles.
Also in that decade, the national speed limit was lowered to 55 mph to save oil after the 1973 Arab oil embargo; based on some reactions, you’d have thought the National Maximum Speed Law called for executing the occasional accidental speeder.
In the 1980s, the tobacco lobby launched a group called the Tea Party, declaring bans on smoking in restaurants and on airplanes were an existential threat to liberty and the first steps down the road to godless communism. People lit up just to get arrested, and the arrests always made the papers.
Over the past three decades, we’ve been treated to a never-ending string of conservative eruptions of faux outrage.
Motorcycle helmets? Tyranny!
The store can only give me a paper bag to take my groceries home? I’m the victim of naked Stalinism!
Phasing out incandescent light bulbs? It’s got to be part of a plot to destroy America!
Did you just say, “Happy Holidays”?! You must hate Jesus and want to force me to renounce Christianity.
And G-d forbid a restaurant should serve a conservative a drink with a paper straw in it: Trump is offering plastic straws with logos on them, to keep freedom alive.
The outrage du jour is masks.
Ever since the post-Civil War days of Lister and Pasteur, we’ve known that wearing masks prevents us from contaminating open wounds or sickening other people with our breath. But don’t tell conservatives about more than 150 years of science: face coverings during the pandemic are a liberal plot, and nothing is more important than “owning the libs.”
Strokes, even in children? It’s more important to piss off Democrats by showing up in the store maskless.
How about meningitis inflaming your brain? Or conjunctivitis damaging your eyes? A bigger worry is whether American banks are suffering.
The common through-line in all these examples of ginned-up conservative outrage is that poorly informed people get sucked into believing that government trying to do something to save lives and protect society is nefarious, insidious and evil.
This is, of course, the thinking of billionaires who make their money selling tobacco (like the guys who paid Mike Pence to write articles saying cigarettes don’t cause cancer) or running refineries, mines or other businesses that dump toxins into our environment.
They have a vested interest in Americans distrusting our government, so when they binge on deregulation, we’ll think it’s because they love freedom, not just profits.
But the simple fact is that the people promoting all this outrage—and their predecessors for the past 50 years—really just don’t give a damn about you or me; they’re just garden-variety sociopaths who only care about how many more millions or billions they can stuff into their already-bulging money bins.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Last week, I walked over to Black Lives Matter Plaza in front of the White House to clear my head and draw some inspiration. When I arrived at the north end of the square, the line of people waiting to climb up a stepladder so they could get a better picture of “Black Lives Matter” painted on the street in bright yellow letters heartened me. They were so obviously proud and energized by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s act of defiance against Donald Trump itself, but also I expect by what that act represented: That the people still own this nation and still have power to move it where it needs to go.
I made my way south towards the White House to drink in the atmosphere. When I got to the corner of 16th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue (where Trump’s Bible fiasco played out), I came upon a scene that spoke volumes about where we are as a nation and where Trumpism is as a force. Approximately 20 shirtless, apparently impaired white supremacists were lurching back and forth between the encamped BLM supporters and a cordon of DC police -– attempting to provoke either or both parties into a Fox News-ready response.
This group was the most pathetic collection of human beings I have ever encountered in my sixty years on this earth. They made me ashamed to be an American, just like Trump has succeeded in making me feel totally differently about the flag and even the word “American.” And I say this as a Veteran, a retired career government official and someone who used to tear up at the national anthem as a young boy.
When you connect the fact that this pitiful group of fascist provocateurs was the best that this movement could get in front of the President’s own home to Trump’s Tulsa rally debacle, his obvious fatigue and dejection after the event, recent Supreme Court rulings rebuking his regime and pushback from government officials, it’s fairly clear that Trumpism has passed its high water mark and is rapidly declining.
Contrast that with the positive energy that gave us Black Lives Matter Plaza and you might conclude that barring some unforeseeable game-changer emerging this summer, the Republicans are going to lose big time in the 2020 elections, and even if Trump, Barr and McConnell attempt a coup to remain in power they will be thwarted. They know it – or at least feel it – themselves.
But let’s be sober about what the fight ahead of us looks like. Germany was all but defeated in the spring of 1945, but thousands of Americans still lost their lives to a dedicated group of fanatical German soldiers – a mix of old men and young boys. Following the American Civil War, the South turned decisive battlefield defeat into an insurgency that lasts to this day in some form. Black Americans have paid a disproportionate price of permitting this for 150 years, and what we are experiencing today is a direct outgrowth of that failure to reinforce the Union’s victory.
What was the difference between Germany and the Confederacy? The Allies pursued de-Nazification vigorously if imperfectly, and we “softly” occupied Germany for 45 years (until the end of the Cold War). Conversely, after the half-hearted Reconstruction program, we let the Southern states resume governing themselves while we rapidly got the economy back up and running (sound familiar?) in the North.
I lived in Germany for six years and maintain continuing relationships with friends there. And I’ve lived 40 years in the American South. I can say unequivocally that Germany is a more evolved country than the American South as a region. Like all nations, Germany is a work in progress, but its lived values and quality of life far surpass those in the American South. It’s not treason to point this out – it would be journalistic and political malpractice not to.
Trump and his supporters are going to go down swinging after the Elections. Or maybe I should say, “shooting.” They’re not going to walk away from 400 years of cultural instinct and material advantage because ‘snowflakes’ outvoted them.
Trump’s dismal poll numbers are just starting to register broadly with Republicans, and we’re already seeing white supremacist terror attacks by the Boogaloo Bois and other groups, massive voter suppression efforts from state government officials, the demonization of Democrats and delegitimization of peaceful protesters and the ginning up of a coordinated propaganda campaign of fear that that makes the Willie Horton ads that sank Michael Dukakis’s candidacy 30 years ago look like child’s play.
That said, America can’t go back to business as usual after we stave off a potential Trumpian coup. If Democrats manage to sweep the 2020 elections, progressives need to “occupy” the American information and political battle-spaces, reform the police and secure justice and equal access for all citizens. Most importantly, we will need to remain vigilant, and continue to stamp out and suppress all anti-democratic ideologies and movements. We forced the Germans to adopt a law that specifically outlaws the use of symbols of fascism – one that has been applied quite broadly and effectively. I am saddened and ashamed to admit this, but we need such a law in the U.S.
Like Abraham Lincoln, I do fondly hope and fervently pray that this mighty scourge may speedily pass away. But as he also knew, hope and prayer must be augmented by decisive action. Let us seize the tremendous, and undeserved, opportunity presented to us by our fellow African-American citizens, eject the cancer of Trumpism from the body politic, and, as Lincoln said in his second Inaugural Address, “strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Or reap the whirlwind.
Mark Hill is a career U.S. Intelligence Officer and former National Security Senior Executive, and Chief Innovation Officer of Revelatur, Inc., a progress accelerator whose mission is to measurably advance Democracy in the United States and globally.
Trump will do anything to be re-elected. His opponents are limited because they believe in democracy. Trump has no limits because he doesn’t.
Here’s Trump’s re-election playbook, in 25 simple steps:
1. Declare yourself above the law.
2. Use racist fearmongering. Demand “law and order” and describe protesters as “thugs”, “lowlife” and “rioters and looters”. Describe Covid-19 as “Kung-Flu”. Retweet posts from white supremacists. In your campaign ads, use a symbol associated with Nazis.
3. Appoint an attorney general more loyal to you than to America, and politicize the Department of Justice so it’s lenient on your loyalists and comes down hard on your enemies. Have it lighten the sentence of a crony convicted of lying under oath. Order investigations of industries you dislike.
4. Fire US attorneys who are investigating you.
5. Fire independent inspectors general who are looking into what you’ve done. Crush any whistleblowers you find.
6. Demean and ignore the intelligence community. Appoint a director of national intelligence more loyal to you than to America. Demand that the head of the FBI pledge loyalty to you.
7. Pack the federal courts with judges and justices more loyal to you than to the constitution.
8. Politicize the Department of Defense so generals will back whatever you order. Refer to them as “my generals”. Have them help clear out protesters. Order the military to surveil protesters. Tell governors you’ll bring in the military to stop protesters.
9. Purge your party of anyone disloyal to you and turn it into a mindless, brainless, spineless cult.
10. Get rid of accumulated experience and expertise in government. Demean career public servants. Hollow out the state department, the Department of Justice, Health and Human Services, and public health.
11. Reward donors and cronies with bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies, government contracts, regulatory rollbacks and plum jobs. Put their lobbyists in charge of your agencies. Distribute $500bn in pandemic assistance to corporations in secret, without any oversight.
12. Coddle dictators. Don’t criticize their human rights abuses. Refuse to work with the leaders of other democracies. Withdraw from international treaties.
13. Create scapegoats. Demonize migrants and lock up asylum-seekers at the border even if they’re children. Put a whitenationalist in charge of immigration policy. Blame Muslims, Mexicans and Chinese.
14. Denigrate and ridicule all critics. Describe opponents as “human scum”. Attack the mainstream media as purveyors of “fake news” and “enemies of the people”.
15. Conjure up conspiracies against yourself supposedly led by your predecessor and your opponent in the last election. Without any evidence, accuse your predecessor of “treason”. Fabricate a “Deep State” out to get you.
16. Downplay real threats to the nation, such as a rapidly spreading pandemic. Lie about your utter failure to contain it. Muzzle public health experts. Urge people to go back to work even as the pandemic worsens in parts of the country.
17. Encourage armed supporters to “liberate” states from elected officials who disagree with you.
18. Bribe other nations to investigate your electoral opponent and flood social media with lies about him.
19. Use rightwing propaganda machines like Fox News and conspiracy theory peddling One America News to inundate the country with your lies. Ensure that the morally bankrupt chief executive of Facebook allows you to spread your lies on the biggest media machine in the world.
20. Suppress the votes of people likely to vote against you.Intimidate voters of color. Encourage Republican governors to purge voter rolls, demand voter ID and close polling places.
21. Seek to prevent mail-in ballots during the pandemic. Claim they will cause voter fraud, without evidence. Threaten to close the US postal service.
22. Get Vladimir Putin to hack into US election machines, as he did in 2016 but can now do with more experience and deftness. Promise him that in return you’ll further destabilize America as well as Nato. Allow him to put a bounty on killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
23. If it still looks like you’ll be voted out, try to postpone the election.
24. If you’re voted out of office notwithstanding all this, refuse to leave. Contest the election, claim massive fraud, say it’s a conspiracy, get your cult of a political party to support your lies, get your propaganda machine to repeat them, get your justice department to back you, get your judges and justices to affirm you, get your generals to suppress any subsequent rebellion.
25. Declare victory.
Memo to America: Beware Trump’s playbook. Spread the truth. Stay vigilant. Fight for our democracy.
It's safe to say that few things have obsessed Donald Trump more than his outrage at professional athletes who have chosen to kneel during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality. Particularly in the fall of 2017 — while he was still smarting from the national outrage at his description of the white supremacists who rioted in Charlottesville as "very fine people" — Trump went on a rampage against the NFL kneelers, trying to position his racist response as patriotism and love for U.S. troops.
"Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He's fired. He's fired,'" Trump ranted at an Alabama rally in September 2017.
He was so committed to this idea that kneeling during the anthem was an insult to the troops and the nation that he sent Vice President Mike Pence to an Indianapolis Colts game for the specific purpose of staging a walkout the moment players took a knee during pregame ceremonies.
Trump has been back at it again lately, tweeting angrily and ranting during his disastrous Tulsa rally that the NFL will regret it if players continue their kneeling protest in the season that may or may not occur this fall.
It was always preposterous that Trump's antipathy to the kneeling athletes was about patriotism and "supporting the troops," rather than flat-out racism. Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who started the kneeling tradition (and who lost his job in the NFL for it), came up with the idea of taking a knee after consulting with a friend who was a Green Beret on the best way to speak out against racism without insulting the troops or the flag.
But in case there was any lingering doubt that Trump's claim to love U.S. troops is all an act, consider the damning reports from the New York Times and other news organizations this week that Trump ignored his own intelligence agencies when they told him Russian agents were likely paying bounties to Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump not only didn't pay any attention to these reports, he continued to push for Russia to rejoin the G7, likely because of his continued admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump adored even before Putin ordered his own intelligence to meddle the 2016 election on Trump's behalf.
Trump denied those initial reports, claiming he hadn't been briefed at all, even though intelligence officials were so concerned that the National Security Council reportedly held an interagency meeting in late March to come up with options to push back against Russia — none of which Trump adopted. In response to Trump's denials, anonymous intelligence officials have since told the Times that Trump received a written briefing on the matter, with one citing a date of Feb. 27.
Furthermore, the AP has reported that White House officials "were aware in early 2019" — a full year earlier — that classified intelligence indicated "Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans," and that then-national security adviser John Bolton personally briefed Trump on the matter in March 2019. (Bolton has declined to comment.)
Since these revelations have hit the headlines, a rowdy debate has erupted in the political-junkie world over whether Trump actively chose to ignore intelligence that Russia was paying Taliban fighters to kill American troops, or he simply didn't understand the intelligence because he doesn't read written briefings and doesn't pay attention to oral briefings.
There are indications that intelligence officials are afraid to tell Trump anything that might threaten his love affair with Russia and specifically with Putin. But in a sense, this is all just hair-splitting. Either Trump is so in love with Putin that he refuses to act on any negative information about him, or he's so in love with Putin that intelligence officials have concluded that sharing negative information about Russia is wasted effort. Either way, Trump cares so little for the lives of American troops that he has done nothing to protect the lives of soldiers from Russian machinations.
Trump's disregard for the life and safety of American soldiers has been made even more clear in his response to the breaking story about the Russian bounties for American lives. As Heather Digby Parton pointed out in Salon on Monday, Trump reacted to the story by playing golf all day, complaining about "fake news" on Twitter, and obsessing about how this makes him look bad — all without showing even a milligram of concern about the U.S. soldiers who may have died thanks to Russian bounties.
Trump's flag-hugging and anthem-adoring routine was never about "the troops," obviously. It was all a pretext for his real agenda, which was to gin up racist resentment against people engaged in peaceful, silent protest against racism and police violence. This reflects both Trump's obsessive racism and his evident belief that conservative voters will excuse any amount of incompetence and malice so long as he keeps stoking their bigotry.
After all, it isn't just that Trump doesn't care about American soldiers dying. Trump has also shrugged off the deaths of more than 126,000 Americans from the novel coronavirus, and is continuing to push the message that the virus is behind us, even though new cases are spiking in many places around the country and several states that "reopened" too hastily are being forced back into partial shutdown.
Trump is no patriot and he never has been. "Patriotism" is a mere fig leaf for his real agenda, white supremacy. This should have been obvious all along, but is now undeniable in light of his unwillingness to push back against Russia even after it bribed enemy forces to kill American troops. Trump's believes that American voters — or at least enough of them to swing the Electoral College — are driven more by racist fears than by concern for the lives of American soldiers. We'll have to wait until November to find out if he's right.
On June 22, U.S. President Donald Trumpordered the temporary suspension of new work visas for temporary workers, including highly skilled workers (H-1B visa). Trump’s decision may appear to be based on his claim to protect American jobs, but the realities are more disturbing.
Trump’s actions are in line with his racist, anti-immigrant, white nationalist agenda. While this move will surely solidify Trump’s support among his voting base, it will likely come at the expense of the U.S. economy and STEM research.
The current decision invokes that history as it disproportionately denies entries to migrants of colour.
Hope and panic
More than 75 per cent of temporary workers come to the U.S. from countries of the Global South. The U.S. grants more than half of all H-1B visas to workers from India, followed by eight other Asian countries.
Trump has made spectacular public endorsements of merit-based immigration policies, implying that the U.S. especially values H-1B visa holders.
At the same time, however, he has sporadically threatened to rescind the Obama-era ruling that allows work permits for spouses of H-1B workers. He has also signed executive orders like “Buy American, Hire American” designed to shrink H-1B and other temporary worker programs.
This inconsistent signalling to the H-1B visa holders serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it keeps Trump’s nationalist, predominantly white voter base satisfied. Secondly, it keeps temporary workers in a limbo state between panic and hope, unsure of their footing and constantly anxious about their status.
The politics here leverages a particular element of human rationality that sociologist Eduardo Bonilla Silva calls racialized emotions. These are feelings and emotions that help perpetuate racist sentiments and racial segregation. These are emotions President Trump has used effectively since the early days of his campaign.
Undermining the economy
Trump’s political calculus becomes evident in these decisions. Despite the concerns expressed by major tech CEOs, Trump is willing to undermine the national economy to satisfy his nationalist base. For Trump, the marginal value of suspending work visas lies in its ideological alignment with the white nationalist rhetoric he regularly espouses. This decision seemingly seeks to tap into the same racist furor mobilized against Latinx and Muslim immigrants that was instrumental in getting him elected in 2016.
Since the inception of the H-1B program in 1998, the U.S. government has taken in over US$5 billion in mandatory payments from employers. These funds contribute toward supporting STEM research and workforce preparedness programs. By suspending the H-1B visa program, Trump has also effectively suspended this revenue stream. This is particularly striking at a time when scientific research is critical for fighting the pandemic.We also see the timing of this latest curb on visas as an attempt by the president to shift media attention away from a sinking economy, Black Lives Matter protests and his struggling reelection campaign.
The suspension of work visas will also result in the loss of human capital, as some international students studying in the U.S. may be forced to return to their home countries. U.S. companies, despite having vacancies, have already become wary of hiring qualified international students who seek to remain in the country after they graduate.
Trump’s actions further reveal their vulnerability. Their legal status can be revoked by the stroke of a pen without any concern for their livelihoods and families, under the guise of a pandemic.
Trump’s actions reveal that despite their contributions to the economy, skilled workers and international students are mere pawns in his white nationalist political circus.
Freedom is impossible for everyone when viewpoints prevail that dehumanize anyone. And it appears that several big social media platforms agree, judging from recent bans or suspensions of racist accounts across YouTube, Twitch, and Reddit.
For those who are dehumanized — whether by racism, sexism, classism, ableism, anti-LGBTQ sentiment or any other prejudices — their voices are diminished or outright silenced, and in the process they lose their ability to fully participate in our democracy. We all need to live in a society where hate is discouraged, discredited and whenever possible scrubbed out completely from our discourse. This doesn't mean we should label all ideas as hateful simply because we disagree with them; to do that runs afoul of President Dwight Eisenhower's famous statement, "In a democracy, debate is the breath of life." When actual hate enters the dialogue, however, it acts as a toxic smoke in the air of debate, suffocating some voices and weakening the rest.
This brings us to a series of recent decisions by big tech companies:
Twitch, a popular video streaming service associated with the gaming community, temporarily suspended President Donald Trump's account because the company claimed it violated their policies on hate. Trump had posted a video of a speech claiming undocumented Mexican migrants are more likely to be rapists and criminals, as well as a video in which he spoke hypothetically about "a very tough hombre" breaking into the house of a "young woman."
"Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch," a spokesperson for the company told Salon. "In line with our policies, President Trump's channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed."
Similarly, YouTube banned several explicitly white supremacist channels for hate speech including those associated with American Renaissance, David Duke, Stefan Molyneux and Richard Spencer. In addition, Reddit banned a popular pro-Trump forum called r/The_Donald along with roughly 2,000 other forums, including the prominent left-wing community r/ChapoTrapHouse. And this doesn't even include Trump's current war with Twitter, one that culminated in him retaliating against the company and threatening free speech.
"We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies," a spokesperson from YouTube told Salon in a statement. "After updating our guidelines to better address supremacist content, we saw a 5x spike in video removals and have terminated over 25,000 channels for violating our hate speech policies."
Reddit referred Salon to a statement explaining,"We committed to closing the gap between our values and our policies to explicitly address hate" and that "ultimately, it's our responsibility to support our communities by taking stronger action against those who try to weaponize parts of Reddit against other people."
No one who understands Constitutional law can argue that these corporate decisions violate the First Amendment, which only protects speech from government repression. Professor Rick Hasen at the University of California, Irvine Law School told Salon by email that "private companies running websites are not subject to being sued for violating the First Amendment. The companies are private actors who can include whatever content they want unless there is a law preventing them from doing so."
UCLA School of Law Professor Eugene Volokh echoed Hasen's observation, but then encouraged Salon to evaluate the issue from a different point of view through a thought experiment.
"It doesn't violate First Amendment rights. It doesn't violate any statute that I know of. It doesn't violate any common law principles because Twitch is a private entity and Amazon, which owns it, is a private entity at the same time," Volokh told Salon. He then said that the decision could be considered problematic if one compared it to a hypothetical scenario in which Harvard fired a professor for being too left-wing.
"You might say there are broader free speech principles that are being violated here, though that of course is not a legal argument," Volokh said. "That's an argument you might think of in Harvard's context as being about academic ethics, that academic institutions shouldn't try to censor speech to or by their students. Likewise, you might say this is a matter of kind of media ethics, and in particular, that a platform like Twitch or like YouTube or like Facebook shouldn't restrict important speech that people are trying to convey."
This is where I must respectfully disagree with this argument. And to explain why, I must make reference to personal experience.
When I was 12 years old, I was nearly murdered in an anti-Semitic hate crime. For the next 18 years, I rarely experienced anti-Jewish prejudice, but when Trump's presidential campaign was gathering steam and he made anti-Semitic comments during a speech, I felt the need to speak out against them. In response, Andrew Anglin — the same prominent neo-Nazi who later became infamous for mocking the death of leftist protester Heather Heyer for speaking out against the bigots at Charlottesville — wrote an article that attacked me in an anti-Semitic fashion. I was described as a "Jew parasite" and a member of an "evil tribe," while others who circulated the article called me a "demonic kike" and "filthy Jew rat."
Two years after that, I was harassed and doxxed by a white nationalist who posted anti-Semitic memes on my Facebook page because I wrote an article criticizing Trump. After I figured out who he was and asked him for an interview, he doxxed me and lied by saying he had only criticized Israel (the article he challenged had nothing to do with the Middle East).
I tell these stories because, after each of those incidents, I wound up on the receiving end of some of the most vile attempts at bullying and intimidation that I've ever experienced. The people who did these things did not do so because they wanted to engage in an honest debate, or because they merely disagreed with me about specific issues. They had decided that, because I am a Jew, they had a right to demean me and strip away my humanity simply for expressing views that they did not share. From the perspective of a bigot, people who are not members of the groups they deem worthy of respect should be grateful for whatever rights their would-be (or actual) oppressors are willing to give them. If that means they get none at all, including the right to life, then so be it.
Ethically speaking, media platforms have a responsibility to create a culture in which all voices are welcomed. There should be a diversity of people and a diversity of viewpoints, with the only restrictions being on thoughts and words that could limit one or the other. It is for this reason that kicking those racists off of their platforms doesn't make us less free, but more so.
I will close by noting the response of Raheem Kassam, a former Breitbart News London editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam who co-hosts a podcast with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. When I asked for his views, he replied, "Imagine running a company and not understanding the unnecessary risk you're taking with people's jobs and livelihoods by taking partisan positions against someone who – if re-elected – is going to pursue you with the full force of the U.S. government for censoring conservatives. Live by the sword, and all that . . ."
"The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. It forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual's religious practices. It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. It also guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition their government."
There is no threat to legal free speech by private companies deciding to rein in the hate speech being spewed by Trump and many of his far right supporters. There is also no threat to the spirit of free speech by those companies doing these things.
Trump threatening to use the government power to retaliate against those companies, on the other hand, is a threat to both the letter and the spirit of the First Amendment. He and his supporters are not being stopped from disseminating their views on other platforms, and Trump himself is one of the most powerful people in the world. When they talk about getting back at those who hold them accountable, it isn't because they care about free speech. In fact, Trump has engaged in various wars against free speech. It is because they don't want to be held accountable for what they say.
A nation founded on the principle of human equality, and depends on a quality marketplace of ideas in order to flourish, deserves better than this. And my hope is that Trump will someday realize that good leadership comes not from avoiding accountability, but by embracing it. To quote a popular superhero movie in which Captain America sounded so much like Trump (which I criticized at the time) that he needed to be checked by Iron Man, his refreshingly intellectual counterpart:
"If we can't accept limitations, we're boundaryless, we're no better than the bad guys."
When White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany took to the lectern on Monday to address reporters, it was presumably her intention to defend President Donald Trump. That is, as she sees it, her job. But whatever her intentions, the defense she offered of the president was anything but.
She portrayed the president as uninformed, steadfastly resistant to new information, and recklessly bumbling his way through presidential duties.
Addressing the most recent international scandal plaguing the White House, McEnany said the president was never briefed on intelligence reports that Russia put bounties on the heads of American soldiers to incentivize Afghanistan fighters to kill them. She said the intelligence community did not have a "consensus" on the reports of the Russian bounties.
"This has not been briefed to the president, because it was not, in fact, verified," she said.
But CNN's Kaitlan Collins pointed out that "not everything in his daily briefings, or in the presidential daily brief, that's the written document, is airtight. They let the president know about what they're hearing."
McEnany responded by saying the intelligence agencies brief the president "as necessary," but didn't explain why it wouldn't have been necessary to brief the president on these findings. Asked if the president has a specific message for Moscow in light of the reports, McEnany said no, "because he has not been briefed on the matter." She said there were "dissenting opinions."
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There's reason to doubt McEnany's denials — it's quite possible Trump was briefed on the findings about the Russian plot, and he simply dismissed them because of his fondness for President Vladimir Putin. Her remarks could indicate that Trump clung to qualifications and caveats of uncertainty in the reports, even if the overall conclusions of the intelligence community on the matter were solid.
But even if we accept McEnany's claims as true, they're a damning indictment of the president. They suggest he has no interest in hearing intelligence reports with any nuance in them, and that he insists on not being briefed about facts unless they're entirely certain. This is a disastrous position for a president to take because presidents must always act with some level of uncertainty. Not being briefed about uncertain matters is a childish and frankly negligent practice for a president to engage in.
One plausible interpretation of McEnany's defenses of the president is that, while the reports about the bouties were made available to the president in written form, no one ever verbally briefed him on the matter. This, too, would be another damning fact about the president, because it implies his lack of interest in reading prevented him from knowing vital information as he has been in repeated contact with Putin.
The idea that Trump is simply too lazy or incompetent to be fully informed about matters he should know came up in another McEnany defense of the president. Discussing the fact that the president shared a video on Twitter of his own supporter cheering the words "white power" at a counter-protester, McEnany said the president was unaware these words were in the video.
"Does the president retweet other people's tweets and video without knowing the full contents of what he's retweeting?" asked a reporter.
"He did not hear that particular phrase," she said.
"Did he listen to the video before he retweeted it?" the reporter asked again.
"He did, and he did not hear that particular phrase," said McEnany.
This is hard to believe because the chants of "white power" occurred after less than 10 seconds into the short video. Again, the most likely interpretation seems to be that Trump and McEnany are lying. But even if McEnany is telling the truth, it again suggests an ignorant, bumbling president who can watch a video of his own supporters and not even realize that they're spewing vile racist slogans. This may be better than a president who is intentionally spreading racist vitriol, but it's still deeply disturbing and disqualifying for the office.
But perhaps worst of all was the White House's response to the raging coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
Tamara Keith of NPR noted that "cases are on the rise, this is a very serious time," and asked: "What is the president's message to the American people, and why aren't we seeing him publicly talk to the public, encourage them to do things to stay safe?"
McEnany played down the dangers, noting (correctly) that the population of those infected appears to be younger than has previously been the case, meaning the risk of death is much lower. But she didn't acknowledge that these spikes in cases are likely to spread to more vulnerable members of society, and she referred to the intense flare-ups as mere "embers that need to be put out." She gave no indication that the president is going to take any personal steps to address the rising crisis, such as by personally embracing the use of masks to prevent the spread.
Once again, this message — put out by the White House press secretary — reflected a president who is disengaged, ignorant of the risks, and unwilling to put in the effort it would take to acknowledge and address a major crisis. Instead, he seems to be hoping everything will just work itself out without his having to make any sacrifices or work hard at all.
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Now, to repeat, McEnany is a known liar. Trump lies constantly. So there's no reason to believe that the White House's excuse-making is anything more than the lastest round of intentional deceptions. McEnany's claims about Trump not being briefed, in particular, seem to contradict his own Sunday night tweet. But even if McEnany's assertions were true, they make the president look terrible. So what must they be hiding if they prefer telling such lies instead of admitting the truth?
Wearing a mask has somehow become part of the Republican Party's ongoing war against science and facts. For some reason, President Donald Trump refuses to wear a mask and has mocked some of those who do so. He hasn't mandated masks at his events and at a GOP conference in Arizona.
Supporters have been dogged about their stance against masks, taking to municipal meetings to clutch their throats and pretend they are somehow suffocating.
Public opinion has turned against the mask-phobic and many have posted videos of irate white women having public meltdowns when asked to put one on. Since the winds shifted, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has decided that masks are important.
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Predictable, Republicans unleashed on McConnell treating him like a traitor to their pro-COVID advocacy.
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On the other side, it prompted many to ask where McConnell has been for the last 75 days and why McConnell has been so unwilling to weigh in on the mask battle until now.
The US presidential election is being shaped by the two crises that have defined 2020 so far: the coronavirus pandemic and the national reckoning over police brutality and racism.
The term “unprecedented” has been used widely to describetheseevents, but they are just the latest versions of the two oldest and biggest problems in American politics: government dysfunction and racial injustice.
The “winning” years
In 2016, Donald Trump presented appealingly easy solutions to these problems.
Untainted by government, he would “drain the swamp” of bureaucrats and his business acumen would fix problems that conventional politicians could not, from trade deficits to crumbling infrastructure. Harnessing racialresentment and a backlash against Black Lives Matter, Trump promised white Americans an end to the painful reckonings of the Obama years, instead offering them a fantasy of black gratitude for white success.
For three years, Trump crafted a re-election narrative around his “winning” approach, based mainly on an economy that was already booming by the time he became president. The partisan polarisation of the 2016 election continued into his presidency.
Trump’s approval rating has always been relatively low despite the strong economy, but it has also been resilient in the face of scandal. Trump faced few crises in this period not of his own making, although there was one that foreshadowed the disasters to come: Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017.
The federal government response to the hurricane was slow, uncoordinated and under-resourced. Trump showed little interest in it and took no responsibility for it. He briefly appeared on the island to congratulate himself and throw paper towels to residents. When the death toll was revealed to be nearly 3,000, revised up from initial reports of 64, Trump claimed Democrats made up most of the deaths “to make me look as bad as possible”.
Pandemic politics
The Puerto Rican tragedy was largely ignored and forgotten, but COVID-19 has replayed many of its themes on an even bigger scale.
Even now, as experts stress the need for widespread testing, Trump complains that testing inflates coronavirus numbers, and says it should slow down.
You can’t fight a pandemic with racial slurs. After a very brief “rally round the flag” boost in polling, voter ratings of Trump’s handling of the pandemic have been poor, and are dropping.
Meanwhile, the kinds of experienced public servants Trump and his allies deride are enjoying much higher approval as Americans rediscover the virtues of scientific expertise.
The pandemic itself may be less electorally consequential for Trump than its economic effects. It is very rare for presidents to win re-election during a recession.
The wave of Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis has damaged not just Trump’s electoral prospects, but the political order he represents.
For decades, conservatives have used the prospect of black unrest to scare white moderates, and Trump’s Nixonian rhetoric suggests he expected the same effect this time.
Instead, public opinion has solidified in support of the large, multiracial protests. The protests have changed minds, including white minds, about the systemic nature of racism in the United States. Racist backlashes may be less potent when there is a polarising white president in power.
Trump has floundered in response to the protests. He has paid lip service to the cause of justice for George Floyd, but has shown more genuine sympathy for those who worry about being called racist.
Ultimately, he has retreated to his comfortable daydreams of black gratefulness. When announcing better-than-expected job numbers, Trump said:
Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country.
Biden is hard to paint as a radical. He has been quick to distance himself from proposals such as defunding police, and he has never supported “Medicare for all”, despite its popularity with the Democratic base and relevance during the pandemic. As president he would be unlikely to bring the kinds of lasting changes that most Democrats want to see.
This is why Trump and his allies cast Biden as “sleepy” and senile. They warn that he would easily be manipulated by radicals, and Trump is really running against the “far left”. So far, however, this approach has compelled Trump to talk a lot about his own physical and mental fitness.
Biden, whose support stems from a perception that he is safe and familiar, having served as vice president in the Obama adminstration, chooses instead to display certain vulnerabilities. This helps explain his rising support among older Americans during the pandemic.
And in a year when race is a defining election issue, Biden has a vast advantage with African American and Hispanic voters, despite parts of his legislative record and his cringeworthy “you ain’t black” interview. He also owes his nomination to African American voters. As Juan Williams put it bluntly, “Joe Biden would be retired if not for the black vote”.
The polls look bad for Trump, but the race remains unpredictable
Averages of national polls currently show Biden leading Trump by between nine and ten points. Even without the pandemic, Trump was never going to have an easy contest against Biden.
Polls still show Trump’s supporters are a lot more enthusiastic about voting for Trump than Biden’s supporters are about voting for Biden, which could be important if voting becomes a health risk.
But enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate may not matter. The 2018 midterm was effectively a referendum on Trump, and the 2020 election will be an even more focused one.
There is reason to believe the race could tighten, if only because no candidate has won a presidential election by more than 9% since 1984, and partisan divisions have become a lot sharper since then. Many conservative-leaning Americans who are undecided about the election may return to Trump. Closer to the election, many pollsters will restrict their samples to people who they believe are likely to vote, rather than just able to vote. These likely voter screens may reveal Trump’s standing is stronger than it currently looks.
Of course, the election isn’t decided by a national popularity contest. Democrats are haunted by the 2016 election, in which Hillary Clinton got 2.8 million more votes than Trump but still lost the state-based electoral college. Currently, The Economist’s election forecast gives that scenario about a 10% chance of happening again.
Polls show Biden leading in most of these contests, but these leads are smaller and more volatile than his national lead. The quality of many state polls has also been questionable, raising the possibility they will repeat the same mistakes as last time.
Biden is discouraging complacency. Referencing a recent NYT/Siena poll that showed him leading Trump nationally by 14%, Biden tweeted:
COVID-19 has sabotaged the usual election-year registration drives that bring millions of new voters into the electorate, which could disadvantage Democrats who traditionally benefit from younger voters.
An uncertain result hinging on a prolonged mail ballot count could lead to the nightmare scenario of a disputed election outcome.
Would Trump accept defeat?
Trump already seems to be preparing to dispute the election. He has repeatedly claimed, with no evidence, that mail voting will facilitate massive voter fraud.
These fraud claims have been repeatedlydebunked, and Twitter was so worried about Trump attacking the electoral process that, for the first time, it flagged two of his tweets as misleading.
Trump may believe, with reason, that Republicans could benefit from in-person voting disarray on election day. Minority voters are far more likely than white voters to have to wait for long periods in lines at polling places.
In 2018, a federal court ruled for the first time since 1982 that Republicans could mount “poll watching” operations without prior judicial approval. This involves organising volunteers to challenge the eligibility of voters at polling places. Courts have previously found these tactics are used to intimidate and exclude minority voters, and they result in even longer delays. Republicans reportedly want to recruit 50,000 poll watchers for the 2020 election, including retired military and police officers.
These claims have also been thoroughly debunked, including by Trump’s own lawyers.
Trump’s resistance to the factual possibility that he could lose has raised fears he might not accept a defeat. Biden, noting that military leaders criticised Trump’s handling of Black Lives Matter protests, has fantasised that the military would escort him from the White House if he tried to “steal the election”.
Extensive lawsuits are a more likely scenario than military intervention, but there is also the danger Trump’s supporters would not accept the legitimacy of a Biden victory.
Given Trump has oftenwarned his supporters that their enemies will take away the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms), there is a possibility of a violent backlash, even if it only consists of isolated incidents.
At the same time, it is increasingly normal that large parts of the population dispute the legitimacy of the president. From Bill Clinton’s impeachment to George W. Bush’s contested victory; from Trump’s “birther” conspiracies about Obama to his own impeachment last year, refusals to accept the lawfulness of the presidency, on grounds real or imaginary, have become a standard part of America’s political repertoire.
A lot can happen in four months, as we’ve already seen this year. The outcome of this race is far from certain, but its ugliness is guaranteed.
