[ad_1]
Opinion polls show that the Republican president is narrowing the gap with the leading Democrat, former Vice President Joe Biden, amid ongoing protests over racial injustice and the resulting violence.
United States President Donald Trump greets the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Charlotte Convention Center on August 24, 2020 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Image: AFP
KENOSHA – Defying requests to stay away, President Donald Trump arrived in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday to highlight the theme of his re-election campaign of “law and order” in a city disrupted by protests following the murder of a black man. by a white cop. .
Opinion polls show that the Republican president is narrowing the gap with the leading Democrat, former Vice President Joe Biden, amid ongoing protests over racial injustice and the resulting violence.
Trump’s trip to Wisconsin, a political battleground state he narrowly won in 2016, gives him an opportunity to emphasize his police-friendly speech in a state he hopes to keep in his column in the Nov. 3 election. .
The state governor and city mayor urged Trump to avoid Kenosha to avoid tensions and allow citizens to recover.
But the president dismissed his appeals and chose to visit one of the troubled cities where anti-racist protesters have clashed with Trump supporters who have converged on protest sites, sometimes openly carrying weapons while vowing to protect property from looters.
After landing at an airport in neighboring Illinois, Trump and his caravan passed groups of onlookers, mingled with people carrying signs of support for him and others carrying signs with “Black Lives Matter” written in large print. At an intersection, policemen in riot gear were lined up blocking traffic, with no visible disturbances.
A 17-year-old Trump supporter was charged with killing two people and wounding another with a semi-automatic rifle in Kenosha. Trump defended the white teenager, who faces six criminal charges, and refused to condemn the violence by his supporters.
But in Portland, Oregon, the site of three months of late-night protests that have often turned violent, a Trump supporter was shot to death on Saturday and the president lamented that “a man was executed on the street.”
“One of the reasons I’m taking the trip today and going to Wisconsin is that we’ve had great success and shut down what would now be a city, which would have been Kenosha, a city that would have burned” The ground by now. ” Trump said before leaving Washington.
‘LAW AND ORDER’
The president takes credit for restoring peace to Kenosha since reinforcements from the National Guard and federal law enforcement agencies were dispatched. Although Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers summoned more National Guard troops at his own expense, Trump dispatched about 200 federal law enforcement officers.
Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s adviser as of Monday, said last week that the president would benefit politically from the kind of unrest that erupted in Kenosha.
Trump’s “law and order” message appeals to his white supporter base.
Meanwhile, it has largely overlooked racial injuries caused by police use of force and downplayed the more than 180,000 deaths in the United States from the coronavirus pandemic.
At the Republican National Convention last week, Trump described Biden as a leader whose policies would create more chaos on the streets, trying to link Biden to vandals and violent left-wing activists.
Biden has responded by calling for the rioters and looters to be prosecuted while saying Trump himself was stoking the violence with divisive rhetoric, calling the president “too weak, too scared of the hatred he has aroused to end it.”
Peaceful protesters have complained that violent, often white, agitators have hijacked their protests with property damage.
Trump did attempt to arrange a meeting with the family of Jacob Blake, the black man partially paralyzed after a police officer shot him in the back, passing by the pastor of Blake’s mother, according to lawyers for the Blake family.
Trump said that, in the end, he would not meet with Blake’s relatives due to a solicitation of attorneys.
Trump’s trip has raised expectations that Biden will also visit Kenosha. Biden’s campaign has said that he will soon go to Wisconsin, where he has an advantage in the polls, but has not released details.
Download the EWN app on your iOS or Android device.
[ad_2]
