General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump is desperate -- and dangerous (Michael D'Antonio, CNN).
After three-and-a-half years of his deceitful and chaotic reign, Trump's lies about voting come as no surprise. The same is true for the string of awful choices that have 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 all was well and played snake-oil salesman for a treatment that was not effective, the virus went on to kill more than 120,000 Americans. And now it's only getting worse. In states like Arizona, Texas, and Florida, where GOP governors followed his lead, the spikes in infections have helped push the nation to break the previous single-day record of new cases.
Beset by these crises, the president has refused to alter course. (This is, it seems, a man who would rather double-down on a deadly decision than admit a mistake.) True to his dangerously divisive form, he's risking the safety of Asian Americans -- who have already been attacked as scapegoats for the pandemic -- by using a racist phrase to describe Covid-19. He has also continued to use social media to spread inflammatory videos; he retweeted clips that show Black people physically assaulting White people and shared a doctored "racist baby" video. (The video, which was manipulated to look like a CNN segment, was taken down by Facebook and Twitter after one of the children's parents lodged copyright objections.)
What's going on here? A recent New York Times and Siena College poll shows Trump is 14 points behind Biden. Never one for learning new tricks, Trump is responding by pushing all the buttons that worked for him as an outsider candidate in 2016. He indulges in stream-of-consciousness rants, like the one explaining his recent physical struggles at West Point. He pastes ugly nicknames on his opponents. And he continues to rail against immigration. In Arizona, the president didn't meet with brave nurses treating coronavirus patients or comfort the families of those who died from Covid-19. He did, however, tour a recently built barrier at the border with Mexico.
The trouble with Trump's rerun approach is that he's not an outsider anymore. He's the President -- which means he bears responsibility for the state our country is currently in. Things are so bad that he's even lost his chance to brag about the economy, which was once at the center of his claim to success. Unemployment is above 13%, and the economy is estimated to contract 5% in 2020. And while other nations are easing out of lockdown and kickstarting their economies thanks to strong public health measures, Trump's pandemic bungling threatens to make the economic price even steeper for Americans.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/25/opinions/trump-desperate-dangerous-reelection-strategy-dantonio/index.html
A beast is at its most dangerous when wounded and cornered.
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)sad part about it, he has support from the DOJ, republican congress, some in the Pentagon, State Department, ICs . .
DTomlinson
(411 posts)rusty fender
(3,428 posts)the scorched earth phase of his presidency. We all know who else had that policy
Cirque du So-What
(25,938 posts)His shit doesnt fly the way it did in 2016.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)To be re-elected tRUMP would have to have won at some point in the past and that's never happened.
It was the rat-fucking that put him where he is and he's planning on using the same tactic to stay in power...if we let him, that is.
mnmoderatedem
(3,728 posts)we've seen them out in public with their AR-15s trying to intimidate politicians and anyone else that disagrees with them. We've seen them almost kill people because they believe such nonsense as the Clintons running a child pornography ring out of a DC pizzeria. They will believe the "rigged election" bullshit as long as it spews from trump's stupid yapper.
This is a scenario I fear. Retaliation from the trumpanzees.
lindysalsagal
(20,684 posts)You know it's inevitable. He's going to do something, and it will be so distasteful, it will go down in history. It's going to be "drown-a-puppy-with -his-bare-hands-on -camera" heinous, and he'll never outlive it.
Just give him a little more time.