Donald Trump celebrated the United States Independence Day weekend fueling divisions over a perceived culture war and dismissing the two most immediate threats to his presidency: a massive resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic and a growing racial justice movement that seeks an end to police violence across the country.
In speeches in historically symbolic places to commemorate the 244th birthday of the United States, the president condemned “Marxists, anarchists, agitators, and looters” and insists on wanting to “tear down our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children.” [and] trample on our freedoms. “
“His goal is not a better America, his goal is the end of the United States,” Trump told supporters at Mount Rushmore, the national monument in South Dakota, where the giant faces of four revered presidents are carved out of the rock.
He repeated the claim in a July 4 appearance at the White House, adding that he believed the Covid-19 pandemic, which has infected 2.8 million Americans and killed nearly 130,000, is “99% harmless.”
On Sunday, Trump spent what was for a charge on the 366th day of his presidency at one of his own private properties, and the 274th while playing golf. But far from the greens, his message echoed the jarring rhetoric of his 2017 inaugural speech, in which he spoke of “American carnage” and a nation divided by destruction and decay.
However, with the number of coronaviruses increasing (Florida, Texas, and Arizona reported weekend increases), protests continue across the country against the deaths of George Floyd and other African-Americans at the hands of the police, and Trump continues to Joe Biden, the alleged Democratic candidate in the November elections, in opinion polls, appears to be losing contact with the leadership of the nation.
Some key aides declined to defend Trump on Sunday, as analysts saw evidence of a mounting backlash.
“I am not going to analyze who is right and who is wrong,” Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Federal Food and Drug Administration, said in an awkward appearance in CNN’s State of the Union when asked about the “coronavirus of Trump 99% harmless ”claim.
“What I am going to say is that we have a serious problem. Cases are emerging in this country, we have all seen the charts associated with that. ”
Earlier this week, with infections increasing in 40 states and many governors, Republicans and Democrats reversing the course of the reopening, Trump continued to insist that the virus “was going to go away.”
Others criticized Trump’s “cruel” Mount Rushmore speech, in which he claimed that protesters’ attempts to topple Confederate-era statues and rename military bases were part of a “ruthless campaign to erase our history.” [and] defame our heroes. “
“It will be seen by history as a derogatory exclamation point towards the past, as the United States begins a new, brighter and fairer paragraph in our national narrative,” Dan Rather, a respected journalist, said in a tweet.
There were more suggestions Sunday that some leading Republicans, fearing for their own fortune in November, are breaking up with the president as his popularity ratings continue to plummet.
“There are so many peaceful protests out there, I support those peaceful protesters,” Joni Ernst, Iowa senator and vice president of the Republican Senate Conference, told CNN.
“We all need to unite. We need to sit down, we need to have very real and very difficult discussions. If we want to improve our country, we must all unite. “
Ernst, one of 52 Republicans who voted to acquit Trump in impeachment, faces a tough battle in Iowa, a watershed state as Trump seeks a second term. She narrowly follows Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield in the latest RealClearPolitics poll.
Trump also faces more pressure for his derogatory response to the coronavirus pandemic and his refusal to wear a mask in public.
“We have come a long way,” Trump said in his White House speech. “Our strategy is progressing well. He goes out in one area, he raises his ugly face in another area. But we have learned a lot. We have learned to put out the flame. “
Phil Murphy, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, a state with 175,000 cases and more than 13,000 deaths, asked Trump to implement a national requirement for citizens to wear a mask.
“It has become almost not even debatable,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press. “If you leave your house, put on a mask. I think it should be a national requirement. “
Trump has insisted that the United States has seen an increase in Covid-19 cases due to increased evidence, including calling for a slowdown in evidence because the numbers “make us look bad.”
“We have now tested almost 40 million people,” he said Saturday. “By doing so, we show cases, 99% of which are completely harmless. Results that no other country can show because no other country has the evidence we have, not in terms of numbers or quality. “
Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious disease expert at Boston University School of Medicine, rejected Trump’s boast.
“He is wrong in the fact that the evidence leads to more cases,” he told NBC. “I think we are not testing enough.
“If this were a war, we would not say that we do not want the information. If it were a flood, we wouldn’t say we don’t want to study the land and try to find out how serious the damage is. Finding those cases allows us to break those chains of transmission. “
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