Bloomberg
President Donald Trump has seized on destructive nationwide protests against police brutality to portray himself as an icon of law and order, eschewing the soothing role past presidents have adopted in similar moments as he seeks to
turn the election-year conversation from his widely panned handling of the coronavirus
outbreak.
The president blamed the protests on Antifa, a loosely organised leftist movement that is a frequent target of conservative critics, and said he would declare the group to be terrorists. His political advisers believe the move pressures his re-election challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, to either agree with the president — splitting with the demonstrators — or side with people that some White House officials regard as rioters.
But in choosing to seize on the political and racial divisions inflamed by the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis police custody last week, the president risks alienating those US voters looking for a leader who will console and unify. The coronavirus outbreak that Trump has sought to relegate to a back burner continues to kill about 1,000 Americans daily.
By painting himself as a purveyor of law-and-order confronting political enemies he’s depicted as incompetent or crazed radicals, the president seeks to recreate the 2016 formula that put him in the White House, when the enthusiasm of Trump’s “forgotten Americans†overwhelmed a dispirited and divided center and left.
But even some in Trump’s camp worry this may be one crisis too many for a president who has seemed to thrive on them. Even as the protests rage, voters are also enduring a coronavirus death toll that’s exceeded 100,000 and a US economy in tatters.
And people willing to take to the streets in the middle of a pandemic will surely show up to vote in November, one person close to Trump’s campaign fretted. Yet Biden has so far struggled to find his own footing on the protests that followed the death of George Floyd.
“It took two days of rioting across the country until Joe Biden finally released a statement, published after midnight this morning, to urge for an end to the violence,†Steve Guest, spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said.
Biden visited a protest site in his home city of Wilmington, along with Delaware Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester.
“The only way to bear this pain is to turn all that anguish to purpose,†Biden said in an Instagram post showing him speaking to an unidentified man
and child at the site.
Trump opted over the weekend against his own national address — a venue where he’s struggled before to portray empathy. He instead limited his public remarks on the demonstrations that roiled cities across the nation to the preface of a speech in Florida celebrating the first launch of US astronauts from US soil since 2011.
Rather than reaching for unity, Trump vowed to end “mob violence†and confront “radical left criminals.â€
On Twitter, the president declared he’d name demonstrators as members of a terrorist organisation and threatened protesters near the White House with “vicious dogs†and “ominous weapons.â€
Trump said he would deploy the National Guard to communities where violence erupted and encouraged his supporters to convene for a counter-protest at the White House, all the while blaming the media and Democratic leaders for the strife.