I know I know. He is a man who was indicted during his first term and who is so awful to work for dead officials to throw him out regularly. (See former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former Defense Secretary James Mattis and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, to name a few.) What I mean is, is that President Donald Trump now seems hurt and desperate - and that makes him dangerous.
His discouragement was evident during Trump's lonely and late walk through the White House lawn on Sunday after the Tulsa rally failed to attract the expected crowds (fewer than 6,200 people attended, according to Tulsa firefighters) . He grabbed a crumpled red MAGA hat, while his ruby red tie was undone, hung freely on his chest. He strode like a heavy bear - and when he managed to greet the photographers, he didn't even try to smile.
Trump must have been overwhelmed by the pitiful participation in Tulsa where he had hoped for the worship banquet he needed to boost his ego. It does not help that polls show that he is overtaken by his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden
Now injured, Trump uses a kind of political terror campaign, spreading blatant lies about foreign-based electoral fraud and a "RIGUE ELECTION 2020". Trump's false claims, which have been repeatedly refuted by CNN and others, destroy public confidence in the foundations of our democracy and set the stage for a potentially dangerous crisis if voters end up questioning the results on polling day.
After three and a half years of his deceptive and chaotic reign, Trump's lies about the vote are no surprise. The same goes for the string of horrible choices that put him in a hole with the voters. In this case, Exhibit A is his administration's failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic. While Trump claimed everything was fine and played a snake oil salesman for an ineffective treatment, the virus continued to kill more than 120,000 Americans. And now it's only getting worse. In states like Arizona, Texas and Florida, where GOP governors have followed suit, spikes in infections have helped push the country to break the previous record of a single day of new cases.
Trump's contemptuous attitude towards social distancing and masks, both recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has also sparked a cultural war over these effective public health tools. From the crowds Trump addressed last week in Oklahoma and Arizona on Wednesday, it seems these true believers have demonstrated their devotion to the president by defying the science of gathering inside without covering their faces. With infections soaring in both states, the rallies were death-defying risk festivals.
The pandemic, compounded by the failure of his leadership, has destroyed the economic record that Trump hoped to re-elect him. Next come nationwide protests against police treatment of black Americans, triggered by the camera murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement. But Trump responded with little empathy for their concerns and repeated his calls for "public order." He also proposed criminal sanctions for the burning of the flag, encouraged long prison terms for those who destroy statues honoring the Confederates, and personally asked Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to restore the only Confederate statue in Washington, DC, after it was demolished last week.
Attacked by these crises, the president refused to change course. (He appears to be a man who would rather double up on a deadly decision than admit a mistake.) True to his dangerously divisive form, he risks the safety of Asian Americans - who have already been attacked as scapegoats for the pandemic - using a racist expression to describe Covid-19. He also continued to use social media to broadcast inflammatory videos; he retweeted clips of black people physically assaulting white people and shared a doctored "racist baby" video. (The video, which has been manipulated to resemble a CNN segment, was removed by Facebook and Twitter after one of the children's parents filed copyright objections.)
What is happening here? A recent New York Times and Siena College poll shows that Trump is 14 points behind Biden. Never one to learn new tricks, Trump responds by pressing all the buttons that worked for him as a foreign candidate in 2016. He engages in rants of consciousness stream, like the one explaining his recent physical difficulties at West Point . He sticks ugly nicknames to his opponents. And he continues to denounce immigration. In Arizona, the president did not meet courageous nurses caring for coronavirus patients or comfort the families of those who died from Covid-19. However, he visited a barrier recently built on the border with Mexico.
The problem with Trump's replay approach is that he is no longer a stranger. He is the president - which means that he is responsible for the state in which our country is currently located. Things are so bad that he has even lost his chance to brag about the economy, which was once at the center of his claim to success. Unemployment is over 13% and the economy is expected to contract by 5% in 2020. And while other countries break free from the lockdown and revive their economies with strong public health measures, Trump's pandemic scuttling threatens to make the economic price even steeper for Americans.
Trump has had almost four years to "make America great." He failed. The vast majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, according to a NORC survey at the University of Chicago, and a typical president would try to acknowledge the suffering and show that he has a plan to end it . Trump did neither, opting instead to end daily coronavirus briefings and ignore the legitimate outcry from protesters while focusing on looting and vandalism.
Aides recently observed Trump's self-destructive tendencies and fears that he will turn into a losing campaign. Even his election rallies, which fail to enforce face masks and social distancing, seem doomed to fail if you consider that the older voters who favored Trump in 2016 are more vulnerable to coronavirus. Encouraging seniors to risk their health by attending indoor gatherings where most people don't wear masks (like Trump's) hardly seems like a good decision. Why risk making them sick, or worse?
In Trump's re-election campaign, strategists focus on the women voters who helped him in 2016. He risks losing their support and must offer them more than meanness and chaos. The problem is, Trump's instinct is more likely to double him up on division, anger, meanness, and rage. He is, however, capable of a grand gesture or performance that would steal part of the attention that his Democratic opponent Joe Biden will get when he announces a running mate, as he should soon do.
Trump has a showman's instinct for drama. Under these circumstances, we should expect something daring, like replacing Vice President Mike Pence with a prominent Republican woman. How does Vice President Nikki Haley sound?
