With four months to spare his re-election campaign against alleged Democratic nominee Joe Biden, President Donald Trump has decided to swing heavily toward culture war and the far-right stance. An important part of that pivot seems to be turning his anger on people who don’t like the same statues as him and comparing those enemies to the Nazi “fascists”.
Surprisingly, there are some in Trump’s political orbit who are not convinced that this tactic will move voters as much as the President seems to think it will. They see the “pivot” as Trump simply continuing with a conservative base that, by itself, will not give him a second term.
But for now, Trump is not listening, telling a crowd at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota on Friday night: “This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.”
Two people close to the president told The Daily Beast last week that they think spending so much time and energy defending lifeless statues, a kick that started with defending those who honor dead racist Confederates, likely won’t help rejuvenate his sagging 2020 campaign. and closing the large voting deficits that former Vice President Biden has opened.
Both sources independently said they intended to gently implore Trump to take a different approach. One of the sources said that he had already told Trump in recent days that making the statue’s fetishization a cornerstone of the reelection speech amounted to a “distraction” that would not help move the necessary votes to the president’s column. before the November elections.
“The question now is: is the statue shit going to work?” said a senior campaign adviser to Trump, adding that current polls were not “conclusive” at best.
Reached for comments on Sunday, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said in a statement. hitting Biden for not being as passionate as Trump is all about vandalism on statues:that “there is a noisy, visible, and sometimes violent faction on the extreme left that seeks to delegitimize the very existence of the United States.”
“President Trump has made it clear that he will not tolerate that,” Murtaugh said. “On the contrary, the first instinct of Joe Biden and his party is to agree with the agitators that there is something fundamentally wrong with the United States and that there always has been.”
But several prominent Trump allies also expressed skepticism that the re-election team and the White House statues strategy would help fix what’s wrong with the campaign, or at least said the president himself should go ahead.
“He would talk about jobs, jobs and jobs. Five million people went back to work last month. Talk about them … [statues] The problem is playing without it.“
Asked if he thought constant complaints about threats to the statues would help correct the ship, Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist who leads the pro-Trump group Great America PAC, answered clearly: “No.”
Lobbyist Barry Bennett, a former senior adviser to Trump during the 2016 race, said that while he believes it is an important issue, he believes the president “need not say anything. [about it]. Everyone is already talking about it … I would talk about jobs, jobs and jobs. Five million people went back to work last month. Talk about them … [statues] the problem is playing without it. “
But Trump can’t help but become the most visible player in this drama. He used his July 4 speeches this weekend to assert that he stands between the American people and a future anarchist, riddled with crime and monument destruction that Biden would preside over. And in recent weeks, public polls have shown scant signs, if any, that the President’s statue and the “heritage” crusade are conclusively working in their favor. He follows Barack Obama’s former vice president in national polls and in certain states critical to his re-election hopes.
Still, Trump has insisted to those close to him that he sees this problem as a winner, and for weeks has emphasized that his defense of “heritage and our history” should be front and center.
He says this is what the American people want, said a White House official and another source with knowledge of the matter. According to The New York TimesSeveral hands on the 2020 President’s campaign said they expected a large reaction from voters to the left’s “culture of cancellation” and that this reaction would boost Trump’s numbers among suburban voters.
That reaction has yet to materialize, even after a month of news cycles that have included numerous images of massive protests against police brutality and institutional racism, riots, and the desecration of statues erected to honor Americans, and sometimes deeply controversial or overtly racist. figures.
For months, Team Trump has been concerned that suburban voters may destroy the president in the upcoming general election, and advisers have repeatedly raised these strategic concerns with Trump in private meetings. Several Trump advisers and outside advisers fear that his reaction to the mass protests, the coronavirus pandemic that is still in full swing, and the collapse of the United States economy has only been made by a deeper hole with this and other features. key demographics.
“One problem is that the president and some of his people see something on Fox News and then understand that that problem will resonate with most voters: Republicans, independents, even some Democrats or former Democrats,” said a Republican operative close to the White House. “That is what is happening with the hyper focus in this [statues] problem and it doesn’t always work. Watch the caravan during the [2018] partial exams “.
In that election, Trump and the Republican Party demagogued the migrant caravans, and continued to do so even after an anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant mass murder was fueled by such demagoguery during that election cycle, hoping that it would help them keep the House. . Democrats ended up picking it up in a “blue wave” anyway.
Three other people working on Trump’s re-election effort privately shared their disbelief that the fixation of the President’s statue could result in much of a poll itself, but he hopes it will act as a “doorway to entry, “as a campaign official said. Trump refined his speech to voters in these crucial past months, after weeks of his apparent inability to find a coherent message about “law and order.”
And many of the president’s lieutenants have decided to enshrine statues and executive actions as central planks in Trumpworld’s current war on messages against Team Biden and the Democratic Party.
“It is about our history, values and freedoms. It is about those who believe that the United States should be the land of the free versus the land of the great government that takes away our liberties.“
Former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), Trump’s current surrogate, said Saturday that he had recently asked the president’s political staff about internal poll data on this and other related issues, and “was told [campaign] the vote is in the [president’s] side.”
When asked this weekend whether his poll showed a more favorable or negative electoral response to the obsession with the president’s statues, John McLaughlin, one of Trump’s top pollsters, told The Daily Beast that he had “no new memoranda. “on this subject, and added:” We will make it appear. “
He also emphasized that for him, “the problem is much bigger than just the monuments. It is about our history, values and freedoms. It is about those who believe that the United States should be the land of the free versus the land of the great government that takes away our liberties. “
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