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Donald Trump talks to merchants whose stores were destroyed during the Kenosha protests. Image: keystone
Trump calls Kenosha protesters terrorists, but violence suits him
The violent clashes in the United States are useful to Donald Trump. His advisers are convinced: they have a theme that will win the elections: a risky strategy.
The mayor didn’t want him there, and neither did the governor. But Donald Trump could not stop visiting the city of Kenosha in the state of Wisconsin.
In the end, he sees the events that tormented the city on the shores of Lake Michigan as a step forward: There the black Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by police officers, violent protests immediately erupted and finally a white man from 17 years shot dead. From the neighboring state of Illinois, supposedly two protesters. Now Trump has abandoned widely destroyed businesses, praised the police, and promised millions in aid for authorities and reconstruction.
There was only one name that never crossed his lips Tuesday in his three hours at the venue: Jacob Blake.
The visit to Kenosha shows how Donald Trump is fine-tuning the strategy and messages two months before the US presidential election. Trump did not travel as president trying to unite a troubled city, but as an electoral activist seeking to stoke a conflict.
The president shoots a page
Take sides against the protesters who take to the streets for racism and police violence. He denies his concern and says there is no systematic racism in the country. He spreads conspiracy theories about the rioters and speaks of “domestic terror” while at the same time fomenting armed counter-demonstrations near him.
Trump, who has been trailing competitor Joe Biden in the polls for months, presents himself as the protector of law and order, but only condemns violence on one side.
More recently, he even appeared to informally give the 17-year-old alleged gunman his blessing. If he hadn’t fired, otherwise “he probably would have been killed,” Trump said. His supporters in Portland, on the other hand, just wanted to defend themselves, Trump said, when they fired paintballs at protesters from their trucks.
The message: the country is threatened with hell
The violence and deaths in Kenosha, the confrontation between the left and Trump supporters in liberal Portland, the looting a few weeks ago in Chicago or the aggressive protest in the capital Washington – Trump wove his message to the people from all this : In those governed by the Democrats The mafia is already wreaking havoc in the cities and a change of power in Washington threatens the entire country with such a hell.
“You are not safe in Joe Biden’s America,” has been his much-quoted message for a week. That’s why Trump needed the images of destruction, and why opponents and supporters fought hard words during his visit: all the better.
Protesters for and against Trump in Kenosha. Image: keystone
It all comes together in Kenosha – the city is located in a highly contested constituency in a highly contested state for presidential elections. In 2016, Trump narrowly won the Kenosha and Wisconsin constituencies.
Biden wants to make the elections for the referendum on Trump and his inability to fight Corona: current status: six million confirmed cases, 184,000 dead. Trump wants to be distracted and focuses on an issue that is actually taking up more and more space.
The issue of violence has a momentum
Images of Kenosha and Portland have dominated American television for the past few days. A month ago, according to a poll by the independent Pew Research Center, violent crime was the fifth most important issue in the elections, behind issues such as the economy, health care and the pandemic, but before the gun law, immigration and climate change. The numbers should now increase.
Trump aides also know that support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which soared to new heights after George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police in late May, is slowly declining. In the state of Minnesota, where Floyd died and where protests swept across the country, his advisers are now suddenly hoping for a victory, even though the state traditionally votes Democrats.
Hope drives you first, not certainty. And the project is risky: At the height of the protests in June, Trump lost a lot of support for failing to acknowledge the systematic racism that drove people to the streets. Is the mood really different in fall?
“Do you feel safer under Trump?”
The big question is how long violent episodes in these cities are stalking an unsafe country in which thousands of deaths by corona still need to be mourned every day, millions have lost their jobs and millions of families do not know when and how they are. their children. back to schools.
His opponent Biden continues to focus on these issues. He had been under pressure from Trump’s security campaign. On Monday, he ventured out of his home state of Delaware for the first time in months and made clear that he, too, condemned the violence of the protests.
But he deliberately broadened the topic. Biden listed the balance sheet of the Corona crisis, emphasizing that the president wanted to cut state health insurance and the social safety net. Then he asked, “Do you really feel safer with Trump?”
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