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ChrisWeigant

(951 posts) Fri Jun 12, 2020, 09:27 PM Jun 2020

Friday Talking Points -- Trump Doubles Down On Racism

President Donald Trump seems to have settled on a theme for his campaign, as he doubles down on blatant racism. Think that's too strongly put? We don't. Consider the following, from just the past week:

Trump announces his first rally since the start of the pandemic, in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 19. Here's why that's a monumentally insensitive place and date: "In 1921, that city was the site of one of the worst race massacres in U.S. history. A white mob descended on an affluent black neighborhood. As many as 300 people died. The June 19 rally also happens to coincide with Juneteenth, a holiday widely celebrated in the black community to mark the day that the last American slaves were freed." As one late-night comic joked, it's like Trump told Stephen Miller to pick the most offensive place and date possible (since Trump wouldn't know beans about either historical reference).

Team Trump also announced that the Republican National Convention (well, parts of it, at any rate) will be moved from North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida, since they're willing to allow a full-on convention with no coronavirus restrictions whatsoever. Trump will reportedly accept his party's nomination on August 27, the second day of the convention. And here's why that's also a monumentally insensitive date and place:

On Aug. 27, 1960, a mob of 200 white people in Jacksonville, Fla. -- organized by the Ku Klux Klan and joined by some of the city's police officers -- chased and beat peaceful civil rights protesters who were trying to integrate downtown lunch counters. The bloody carnage that followed -- in which ax handles and baseball bats were used to club African Americans, who sought sanctuary in a church -- is remembered as "Ax Handle Saturday."

So Trump is starting his rallies up again to commemorate the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, on Juneteenth, after which he will be formally nominated on the 60th anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday. These aren't just "dog whistles," folks, these are flat-out statements that Team Trump -- and by extension, the entire Republican Party -- simply do not care what black people think. Not one tiny little bit.

If anyone's still in doubt, Trump is the lone holdout in a new movement to rename 10 Army bases which have honored traitors to this country who waged a treasonous insurrection against the federal government (which we wrote about last week, by the way). The bases named for Confederate generals (and one colonel) are, at this particular point, so indefensible that the Army itself had just signaled that they were indeed open to the concept of renaming them -- which was a stunning turnaround from their decades of refusing to even consider the idea. Defense Secretary Mark Esper also signaled he would be open to such a move. The Marine Corps and the Navy just banned the Confederate battle flag. And even the Republican-controlled Senate had taken steps to force renaming the bases in the next three years.

Everyone was on board, it seemed, except Trump. Here's how he reacted: "These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom.... Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations." Note that Trump was utterly unaware of the irony of proclaiming "a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom," when the men the bases were named after lost and surrendered in their war to continue the enslavement of African-Americans. Also, "Fabled"? These are not imaginary bases, they are actually quite real. But Trump threatened to veto any bill which tried to rename them.

Just moments after his tweet, NASCAR also announced a ban on the Confederate flag. That's right -- even NASCAR is showing more moral leadership than the president of the United States. Think about that for a moment.

Need more proof? Mercedes Schlapp, a senior Trump campaign advisor, retweeted a video this week "that lauded a man in Texas in a viral video as he yelled the n-word and wielded a chainsaw to chase away anti-racism demonstrators.... 'Go home!' yells the man, who was arrested Friday. 'Don't let those f------ n------ out there fool you!'" When asked about it by Politico, Schlapp finally apologized and took down the tweet. Because she got caught, we have to assume.

Throughout it all, some White House advisors have tried to talk Trump into giving a national address on the problem of racial inequality. But, as Dana Milbank from the Washington Post points out, that speech has already been given, multiple times. Trump's own words absolutely condemn him on the subject, meaning there is little he could say now (or, more accurately: "read off a TelePrompTer in a disinterested and monotone voice" ) that is going to convince anyone differently.

Trump quite obviously thinks a nakedly racist strategy will be a winning one for him. He's wrong about that, because the country has changed over the past few decades -- and over the past few weeks. Polls continue to show an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with the protesters in the streets, while precious few are buying Trump's continuing conspiracy theory that it's all the work of "Antifa" and other scary-sounding leftwing groups. In fact, the polls have not been kind to Trump at all of late.

Poll after poll shows Trump sinking like a stone, while Joe Biden opens up a wider and wider lead. The polling for Biden right now is (by the way) much better than Hillary Clinton's numbers were, four years ago. Several polls just showed Biden with a whopping 14-point lead over Trump. Trump, snowflake that he is, tried to get some reassurance from his phone buddies, but according to Vanity Fair, even they weren't buying it. From a review of the article:

Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair reports that Trump is, in the words of one former adviser, "malignantly crazy about the bad poll numbers" and is threatening to "broom" his son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Brad Parscale. Trump's reportedly so distraught about the poll numbers he's calling up his friends in New York and "asking people to agree with him that the polls are biased," according to a source of Sherman's. "But no one is telling him what he wants to hear."

I think we can all agree that Trump is "malignantly crazy," although we personally would have stopped the sentence right there. Heh.

Kidding aside, Trump lashed out in multiple directions. He hired a notoriously bad Republican polling firm (one so bad few Republicans hire them these days) to write a letter explaining why all the polls were wrong and there was actually a huge swell of support among the American people for their Dear Leader Trump. He also sicced his campaign's legal team on CNN, for their poll showing him badly losing to Biden:

Donald Trump's reelection campaign is demanding that CNN apologize for a poll that shows Joe Biden with a 14-point lead over the president.

The campaign also wants the news network to retract the poll, supposedly because it's biased (but really because it points out the serious challenges Trump faces in his quest for a second term).

The campaign whined about the negative poll stated its position in a cease-and-desist letter to CNN President Jeff Zucker. It argued that the CNN poll is "designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling."

The letter -- signed by the Trump campaign's senior legal adviser, Jenna Ellis, and chief operating officer Michael Glassner -- called CNN's poll "phony" and "a stunt" meant to "cause voter suppression, stifle momentum and enthusiasm for the President, and present a false view generally of the actual support across America for the President."

Trump's campaign minions also requested that CNN publish a "full, fair, and conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification to correct its misleading conclusions."

CNN's response?

"We stand by our poll," Matt Dornic, a network spokesman, said.

In a similar display of ineptitude, the Republicans have just voted to adopt their 2016 party platform document, unchanged. This is pretty hilarious, since it contains lots of snide references to "the president" and "the current administration." Here's the best example: "The current Administration has abandoned America's friends and rewarded its enemies." Hard to argue with that, really, at this point.

Speaking of ineptitude, the Trump administration may have just made a serious (perhaps even fatal) error. It was just reported that Trump's Department of the Interior is going to push -- after the election, notably -- to resume offshore drilling in Florida. The report notes that this is "a politically explosive topic for Floridians, who worry that oil spills would devastate their tourism-based economy in reprise of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster." If we were in charge of Joe Biden's advertising budget, we'd currently be preparing an entire ad campaign for Florida warning them all of what Trump has in mind for their state. Because this is a real political loser for Trump, in a very key swing state.

OK, this is already long enough, so we'll just whip through a few more items before moving along. The coronavirus pandemic seems to be entering a second wave, even if all the governors (from blue states and red) are ignoring the warning signs in their rush to reopen. Oh, and the C.D.C. reports that more and more people are following Trump's sage advice by gargling bleach.

Republicans in Iowa are terrified of their citizens being able to easily vote, so they're moving to make it harder and more dangerous. Because of course they are.

There are several disconcerting signs of possible election problems in November, which stretch beyond what was called "a hot, flaming mess" in Georgia (which they had been warned about in advance, multiple times, it is worth mentioning). Long story short, when states that are unused to massive mail-in balloting try to count the ballots, it can take a long time.

Speaking of voting by mail, we wonder what President Trump would say about a person trying to vote by using a business address as their residence -- which is against state law. Perhaps he'd call it "voter fraud"? Or what about someone illegally using their parents' address to vote even though they were clearly a resident of another state at the time? More "voter fraud"? This describes how both Donald Trump and his official mouthpiece Kayleigh McEnany have been casting their ballots -- by mail -- in Florida. Which, incidentally, is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

And finally, Senator Tom Cotton tried to use an absurd example by predicting that them dang libruls wanted to rename the Washington Monument the "Obelisk Of Wokeness." The Twitterverse was highly amused by this label, with several pointing out that it would be a great name for a heavy metal album.

We're going to kind of punt on this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award, because the people who impressed us the most this week are studiously apolitical. That's the whole point, in fact. But before we get to that, here are a few noteworthy Democrats who would have been considered if this hadn't been a week of monumental pushback on Donald Trump.

First and foremost was Philonise Floyd, brother of George, who gave some wrenching testimony to the House Judiciary Committee this week. His remarks (from two sources, so they may be in the wrong order, we should admit) were nothing short of powerful:

I couldn't take care of George the day he was killed, but maybe by speaking with you today, I can help make sure that his death isn't in vain. He didn't deserve to die over 20 dollars. I am asking you, is that what a black man is worth? Twenty dollars? This is 2020. Enough is enough.

I can't tell you the kind of pain you feel when you watch something like that. When you watch your big brother, who you've looked up to your whole life, die. Die begging for your mom. I'm tired. I'm tired of the pain I'm feeling now and I'm tired of the pain I feel every time another black person is killed for no reason. I'm here today to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain. Stop us from being tired.

Protesters in multiple cities tore down statues that had outlived their purpose this week. In Boston, a Christopher Columbus statue was beheaded, another in St. Paul, Minnesota, was toppled, and in Richmond, Virginia, Chris was unceremoniously dumped into a lake. Also in Richmond, a Jefferson Davis statue was toppled, and a few others along Monument Avenue seem to be next on the list.

Nancy Pelosi is now leading an effort to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol, but Mitch McConnell is (of course) fighting the plan.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo reacted to Trump's delusional tweet pushing a conspiracy theory about a 75-year-old protester shoved to the ground in Buffalo for no reason whatsoever (and who was still in the hospital in very serious condition after his fall). Cuomo didn't mince words in responding to Trump:

How reckless. How irresponsible. How mean. How crude. I mean, if there was ever a reprehensible, dumb comment -- and from the president of the United States. At this moment of anguish and anger, what does he do? Pours gasoline on the fire. If he ever feels a moment of decency, he should apologize for that tweet. Because it is wholly unacceptable.

Also getting under Trump's skin this week were both the governor of Washington state and the mayor of Seattle. Here's the story:

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, both Democrats, mocked President Donald Trump over his threat to invade the state's most populous city after protesters set up a "cop-free" zone around Capitol Hill.

Peaceful protesters created a six-block "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" after the city's police department abandoned their precinct in an effort to de-escalate tensions prompted by officers' use of tear gas on demonstrators, which was temporarily banned by Durkan. Protesters in the "cop-free zone" have brought art and books to the area, and demonstrators have also held concerts and movie nights.

But as Seattle moved to ease tensions after weeks of protests, Trump threatened to send in federal forces to "take back" the city amid numerous threats to sic the military on peaceful protesters.

"Radical Left Governor @JayInslee and the Mayor of Seattle are being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before," Trump tweeted. "Take back your city NOW. If you don't do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stooped [sic] IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST!"

But Inslee and Durkan, both Democrats, did not seem overly concerned about the protesters or Trump's threat.

"A man who is totally incapable of governing should stay out of Washington state's business. 'Stoop' tweeting," wrote Inslee, mocking the president's typo.

"Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker," Durkan tweeted, adding a #BlackLivesMatter hashtag.

And finally the Meidas Touch PAC, founded by Ben Meiselas (the lawyer representing Colin Kaepernick), put out a great new ad chastising Trump for calling the crackdown on protesters "beautiful." The ad ends with "None of this is beautiful," and "End this ugly presidency." This immediately caused #UglyPresident to trend on Twitter.

But while all of that was notable, what was much more important this week was the growing reaction from military officials in condemnation of Trump's use of military force in Washington, D.C. -- especially the effort to clear Lafayette Square so Trump could hold a blatantly political photo opportunity, holding a Bible up in front of a church.

Last week, plenty of generals spoke up, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper essentially admitted that it was wrong for him to appear with Trump in some of the photos. This week, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley apologized much more directly. This was after Milley felt the need to issue "a memo reminding America's military personnel that their loyalty is to the Constitution, not to any one individual who happens to hold political power." This week he went further by admitting his own culpability in a graduation speech to the National Defense University (again, our apologies for using multiple sources and being unsure of the actual order of these statements):

I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.

As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.

That sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.

We who wear the cloth of our nation come from the people of our nation, and we must hold dear the principle of an apolitical military that is so deeply rooted in the very essence of our republic.

Colin Powell, who is retired, was even blunter:

"I think [Donald Trump] has not been an effective president," Powell told CNN's Jake Tapper in an interview Sunday morning. "He lies all the time. He began lying the day of inauguration, when we got into an argument about the size of the crowd that was there. People are writing books about this favorite thing of lying. And I don't think that's in our interest."

. . .

"I'm very happy with what General [John] Allen said and all the other generals, admirals are saying and diplomats are saying. We have a Constitution and we have to follow that Constitution, and the president has drifted away from it."

. . .

"The one word I have to use -- with respect to what he's been doing for the last several years -- is a word I would never have used before and I never would have used with any of the four presidents I have worked for: He lies. He lies about things. And he gets away with it, because people will not hold him accountable."

Retired General Wesley Clark, former supreme commander of NATO, was just as scathing:

Trump is a very good example of what not to do and be as a leader. He doesn't take responsibility. He doesn't build trust. He doesn't bring people together. He doesn't do his homework and understand the details of the decisions he's making. He doesn't think through the strategic consequences.

Donald Trump is a transactional leader. He thinks that being president of the United States is the same as buying real estate. Donald Trump also believes that he can use reckless rhetoric and that there will not be any consequences. In both international and domestic politics, language has consequences. Trump's abusive language is very problematic.

Reliability and consistency are very important. Trump does not have those qualities.

As the president of the United States, he represents the whole country. The United States has spent 75 years since the end of World War II assuring the world that we had strong values and that was true across administrations. America also made sure the world understood that we were reliable. President Trump has discarded those values.

They weren't the only ones speaking out, either. An astonishing 89 former high-ranking defense officials -- including four former secretaries of Defense -- signed a letter which ran in the Washington Post condemning Trump from betraying his oath to defend the Constitution.

Remember when Trump promised to "listen to his generals?" Well, Mister President, they're talking to you right now. The Battle Of Lafayette Square was an abomination. It was a direct assault on the very Constitution you swore to uphold. That's precisely what all the generals are saying. And they're right.

Joe Biden even went as far as predicting that it'll take the military to pry Trump out of the White House, when the time comes:

I was so damn proud. You have four [chairman of the Joint] Chiefs of Staff coming out and ripping the skin off of Trump, and you have so many rank-and-file military personnel saying, "Whoa, we're not a military state. This is not who we are." I promise you, I'm absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.

The apolitical nature of the United States military is an absolute bedrock of American democracy. Donald Trump has soiled that tradition. This is more important than anything else that was going on this week, at least in the larger constitutional sense. Which is why although we cannot give apolitical figures a very political award, we're using this space instead to offer them all our heartfelt applause. Evil triumphs when good men stay silent, which is why now is not the time to do so. For bravely speaking out, all of these military officers deserve the thanks of our nation.

Once again, no Democrat rose to the level of disappointment this week, at least in our eyes, so we'll have to put the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award back on the shelf until next week -- unless anyone's got a nomination to make down in the comments (as always).

Volume 578 (6/12/20)

We're dispensing with our own talking points this week in order to counter one that has grown in importance already. And we have to admit, up front, that what we have to say most likely isn't going to win us any friends on the far left, but we still feel the need to address it here.

"Defund the police" is a really bad slogan. There, we said it.

We cannot argue that proponents of the idea aren't fighting for the right cause, because we too believe in that general cause. We agree that policing in American needs massive realignment. We are even sympathetic to the concept of moving police funding from doing things like buying military-grade equipment and weapons to social services instead. But we still say it's a very bad political slogan to champion.

Admittedly, as a slogan, it is short and sweet. Only three words. Memorable. Those are all big points in its favor. But the key problem lies in the fact that it is not exactly easily-defined -- except by those who oppose it.

What does "defund the police" mean? Well, you get different answers if you ask different people. It is nebulous, even to the people who are using it. But to its detractors it means one thing and one thing only: "completely remove all police and replace them with nothing more than social workers." Some people using the phrase even actually agree with this interpretation:

For some activists, such as those behind the movement "8toabolition," defunding the police is part of a larger effort to redefine society.

"The end goal of these reforms is not to create better, friendlier, or more community-oriented police or prisons," the group's website reads. "Instead, we hope to build toward a society without police or prisons, where communities are equipped to provide for their safety and wellbeing."

What this means is that other people and groups using the slogan who aren't this radical have to continually define exactly what they mean by it, while opponents don't have to bother with explanations. "Defunding" means "getting rid of" to a whole lot of people, plain and simple. And when you have to define a political slogan because the first impression it leaves is the wrong one, it is a bad slogan almost by definition.

So far, while a heartening majority of Americans support the protests and what the protesters are saying, this particular slogan polls pretty badly. An ABC/Ipsos poll just out shows 64 percent of the public against defunding the police, and even when nuanced by asking about "reducing the budget of the police department in your community, even if that means fewer police officers, if the money is shifted to programs related to health, housing, and education," it didn't help much -- 60 percent were against that, too.

These numbers get worse the closer you look. Here's a better breakdown of polling on all of the goals of the movement:

But the idea of defunding is also by far the least popular, with just 27% of Americans in favor. By contrast, solid majorities of the public favor banning police chokeholds (73% support this), creating a federal registry for complaints against officers (72%), developing a national standard for police use of force (69%), making it easier for the federal government to charge officers for using excessive force (68%), assigning independent prosecutors to handle cases where officers use fatal force (67%) and eliminating officers' "qualified immunity" against misconduct lawsuits (59%).

There's more modest support for barring the use of "no-knock" warrants in drug cases (49%) and for limiting the transfer of military equipment to police departments (46%). The public is almost evenly divided on a proposal to cut the budget of their local police department, and instead increase spending on services like social workers and mental health professionals.

Few groups even within the Democratic base support the idea:

Self-described liberals support defunding the police by a 13-point margin. But nearly every other ideological and demographic group opposes it. Democrats and Democratic leaners oppose it by a 4-percentage point margin, and Black Americans oppose it by a 20-point margin.

Even African-Americans aren't on board this particular train yet, in other words. Which is why Joe Biden very smartly also refused to get on board:

"No. I don't support defunding the police," Biden told CBS's Norah O'Donnell on Monday night. "I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community, and everybody in the community."

In other words, this is a bad political slogan, at least right now. It even risks overshadowing the rest of the movement's goals -- which, as that polling shows, is largely supported by the public -- as opponents of "defund the police" try to make it the sole demand of the protesters. Which Trump and his minions are already attempting.

So speaking from a wordsmithing point of view, this is a bad slogan. More people view it negatively than positively -- even among the Democratic base. It is probably already too late to attempt to change it to something more definitional -- something which doesn't require another paragraph or two to explain, in other words. National Democrats are moving past it already, by making a solid proposal in Congress to reform policing nationwide, which is all to the good. Joe Biden has already said he doesn't support the idea, which could lessen the impact of Trump and all the GOP detractors. So please, let's not make this the centerpiece of what, so far, has been a widely-supported nationwide movement. We respect those who disagree with this conclusion, but we still feel that anything this unpopular deserves some serious second thoughts.

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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