Trump Believes That He Is Losing Because He Hasn’t Been Racist Enough
On the one hand, all available evidence suggests this is wrong. On the other hand, Tucker Carlson suggests it is right.
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Politics: Trump Believes That He Is Losing Because He Hasn’t Been Racist Enough
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VISION 2020 JULY 2, 2020
Trump Believes That He Is Losing Because He Hasn’t Been Racist Enough
By Eric Levitz@EricLevitz
He’s tried racism and he’s all out of ideas. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Over the past month, Joe Biden has opened up a double-digit lead over Donald Trump in national polls.
That same period witnessed the following milestones in American political life:
• For the first time since the movement’s inception, Black Lives Matter won the support of a large majority of voters — and a slim majority of white ones.
• The percentage of Americans who say that “racial discrimination is a serious problem,” that “police are more likely to use deadly force against Black people,” and that “white people are more likely to get ahead” all hit record highs in various tracking polls.
Graphic: Michael Tesler/Washington Post
• For the first time in 55 years of polling the question, Gallup found more support for increasing immigration among the U.S. public than for reducing it.
Graphic: Gallup
• A Pew Research survey found that Biden boasts his largest advantage over Trump on two questions: Which candidate voters trust to “effectively handle race relations,” and which one can “bring the country closer together.”
• The Republican government of Mississippi voted to retire the last remaining state flag featuring a Confederate emblem. Five years ago, a white supremacist slaughtering African-American churchgoers at a Bible study wasn’t enough to get the Magnolia State to heed calls for removing a tribute to the slavocracy from its official symbol. In 2020, the murder of George Floyd proved sufficient.
• And Donald Trump concluded that the reason he is losing support to Joe Biden is that he hasn’t been nearly racist enough.
That last bit isn’t mere conjecture. On Wednesday, three Trump confidants told Axios that the president regrets heeding Jared Kushner’s advice to broaden his appeal by embracing milquetoast police and criminal-justice reforms; as one source summarized Trump’s thinking, he wants “no more of Jared’s woke shit.”
This account of Trump’s private reasoning comports with his public actions in recent days. Just this week, the president has:
• Described New York’s plan to paint “Black Lives Matter” down Fifth Avenue as a plot to affix a “symbol of hate” onto the city’s “greatest street.”
• Threatened to end an Obama-era policy that bars local governments from accessing federal housing funds unless they make affirmative efforts to track and reduce racial segregation in their communities. Trump said that he was reviewing this regulation on behalf of the “great Americans who live in the Suburbs,” and lamented that the policy is “not fair to homeowners.”
• Vowed to veto the Defense Authorization Act unless an amendment requiring the renaming of U.S. military bases that presently honor Confederate generals is stripped from the bill. (In announcing this position, Trump made sure to note that the amendment was sponsored by “Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren.”)
If one imagines Trump to be a rational political actor, it is difficult to make sense of these actions. According to Axios, Trump soured on Kushner’s calls for triangulation on criminal justice out of concern that indulging such reforms might be “seen as undercutting police” — as though anti-reform cops and Blue Lives Matter bumper-sticker owners were swing constituencies. George Floyd’s death has created plenty of political challenges for Trump. But one thing it absolutely hasn’t done is jeopardize the Republican Party’s grip on single-issue, “unshackle the police” voters.
If subjecting the United States to the worst coronavirus outbreak in the developed world — and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression — has not cost Trump the support of his culturally conservative base, then an executive order barring cops from using choke holds (unless they really feel like it) isn’t going to either. A president with a 40 percent approval rating doesn’t need to sweat the enthusiasm of his faithful; an enthused voter’s ballot doesn’t count for more than a reluctant one’s. Rather, Trump’s overriding preoccupation should be winning back the voters who’ve been drifting away from him. And there is no evidence that such Americans have been alienated by his failure to turn the racial demagoguery dial up to 11. As The Atlantic’s David Graham notes, the recent upsurge in white Americans’ support for Black Lives Matter has corresponded with a precipitous drop in Trump’s standing among the demographic.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the president hasn’t actually lost much ground among the idiosyncratic minority of Black and Latino voters who’d been supporting him up to that point. But Trump has been hemorrhaging the votes of white college-educated Americans — particularly white college-educated women. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won that contingent by 7 points in exit polls; in the New York Times’ most recent national survey, Biden beats Trump with such voters by 39.
In truth, Trump’s approach to the 2020 campaign is no more rational than his approach to COVID-19. The president has as much reverence for political empiricism as he does for the public-health variety. To gauge the efficacy of a given campaign tactic, Trump does not turn to polling crosstabs; he turns on Tucker Carlson. The mogul’s religious devotion to right-wing media was a source of genuine strength in the 2016 Republican primary. Other GOP candidates pandered to Red America’s legions of Fox News grandpas, but only the billionaire was authentically one of them.
In the present context, however, the fact that Trump is a maniacal narcissist and cable-news addict works to his detriment. Other candidates court media attention in order to secure political power. Trump, by contrast, sought political power in order to secure media attention. His highest ambition is to see himself affirmed on his favorite television programs, and to feel himself loved in front of an audience of hooting supplicants. Convening mask-free, indoor rallies in swing states with soaring COVID-19 infection rates is a poor way to go about trying to win reelection, but it’s a sound strategy for securing an applause junkie a quick hit of validation. When Trump carefully monitors Tucker Carlson’s assessment of his racial politics — while ignoring that of swing voters — he is undermining his own long-term political interests, but faithfully attending to his near-term psychological ones. Of course, the president isn’t inclined to view himself as self-destructively narcissistic, and has thus (reportedly) convinced himself that his favorite infotainers channel the preferences of a “silent majority” too taciturn to make itself heard in opinion polls.
But they don’t.
And if Trump doesn’t accept that soon, then the loud minority he’s been courting will go mournfully quiet on Election Night.
Trump Believes That He Is Losing Because He Hasn’t Been Racist Enough
By Eric Levitz@EricLevitz
He’s tried racism and he’s all out of ideas. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Over the past month, Joe Biden has opened up a double-digit lead over Donald Trump in national polls.
That same period witnessed the following milestones in American political life:
• For the first time since the movement’s inception, Black Lives Matter won the support of a large majority of voters — and a slim majority of white ones.
• The percentage of Americans who say that “racial discrimination is a serious problem,” that “police are more likely to use deadly force against Black people,” and that “white people are more likely to get ahead” all hit record highs in various tracking polls.
Graphic: Michael Tesler/Washington Post
• For the first time in 55 years of polling the question, Gallup found more support for increasing immigration among the U.S. public than for reducing it.
Graphic: Gallup
• A Pew Research survey found that Biden boasts his largest advantage over Trump on two questions: Which candidate voters trust to “effectively handle race relations,” and which one can “bring the country closer together.”
• The Republican government of Mississippi voted to retire the last remaining state flag featuring a Confederate emblem. Five years ago, a white supremacist slaughtering African-American churchgoers at a Bible study wasn’t enough to get the Magnolia State to heed calls for removing a tribute to the slavocracy from its official symbol. In 2020, the murder of George Floyd proved sufficient.
• And Donald Trump concluded that the reason he is losing support to Joe Biden is that he hasn’t been nearly racist enough.
That last bit isn’t mere conjecture. On Wednesday, three Trump confidants told Axios that the president regrets heeding Jared Kushner’s advice to broaden his appeal by embracing milquetoast police and criminal-justice reforms; as one source summarized Trump’s thinking, he wants “no more of Jared’s woke shit.”
This account of Trump’s private reasoning comports with his public actions in recent days. Just this week, the president has:
• Described New York’s plan to paint “Black Lives Matter” down Fifth Avenue as a plot to affix a “symbol of hate” onto the city’s “greatest street.”
• Threatened to end an Obama-era policy that bars local governments from accessing federal housing funds unless they make affirmative efforts to track and reduce racial segregation in their communities. Trump said that he was reviewing this regulation on behalf of the “great Americans who live in the Suburbs,” and lamented that the policy is “not fair to homeowners.”
• Vowed to veto the Defense Authorization Act unless an amendment requiring the renaming of U.S. military bases that presently honor Confederate generals is stripped from the bill. (In announcing this position, Trump made sure to note that the amendment was sponsored by “Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren.”)
If one imagines Trump to be a rational political actor, it is difficult to make sense of these actions. According to Axios, Trump soured on Kushner’s calls for triangulation on criminal justice out of concern that indulging such reforms might be “seen as undercutting police” — as though anti-reform cops and Blue Lives Matter bumper-sticker owners were swing constituencies. George Floyd’s death has created plenty of political challenges for Trump. But one thing it absolutely hasn’t done is jeopardize the Republican Party’s grip on single-issue, “unshackle the police” voters.
If subjecting the United States to the worst coronavirus outbreak in the developed world — and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression — has not cost Trump the support of his culturally conservative base, then an executive order barring cops from using choke holds (unless they really feel like it) isn’t going to either. A president with a 40 percent approval rating doesn’t need to sweat the enthusiasm of his faithful; an enthused voter’s ballot doesn’t count for more than a reluctant one’s. Rather, Trump’s overriding preoccupation should be winning back the voters who’ve been drifting away from him. And there is no evidence that such Americans have been alienated by his failure to turn the racial demagoguery dial up to 11. As The Atlantic’s David Graham notes, the recent upsurge in white Americans’ support for Black Lives Matter has corresponded with a precipitous drop in Trump’s standing among the demographic.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the president hasn’t actually lost much ground among the idiosyncratic minority of Black and Latino voters who’d been supporting him up to that point. But Trump has been hemorrhaging the votes of white college-educated Americans — particularly white college-educated women. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won that contingent by 7 points in exit polls; in the New York Times’ most recent national survey, Biden beats Trump with such voters by 39.
In truth, Trump’s approach to the 2020 campaign is no more rational than his approach to COVID-19. The president has as much reverence for political empiricism as he does for the public-health variety. To gauge the efficacy of a given campaign tactic, Trump does not turn to polling crosstabs; he turns on Tucker Carlson. The mogul’s religious devotion to right-wing media was a source of genuine strength in the 2016 Republican primary. Other GOP candidates pandered to Red America’s legions of Fox News grandpas, but only the billionaire was authentically one of them.
In the present context, however, the fact that Trump is a maniacal narcissist and cable-news addict works to his detriment. Other candidates court media attention in order to secure political power. Trump, by contrast, sought political power in order to secure media attention. His highest ambition is to see himself affirmed on his favorite television programs, and to feel himself loved in front of an audience of hooting supplicants. Convening mask-free, indoor rallies in swing states with soaring COVID-19 infection rates is a poor way to go about trying to win reelection, but it’s a sound strategy for securing an applause junkie a quick hit of validation. When Trump carefully monitors Tucker Carlson’s assessment of his racial politics — while ignoring that of swing voters — he is undermining his own long-term political interests, but faithfully attending to his near-term psychological ones. Of course, the president isn’t inclined to view himself as self-destructively narcissistic, and has thus (reportedly) convinced himself that his favorite infotainers channel the preferences of a “silent majority” too taciturn to make itself heard in opinion polls.
But they don’t.
And if Trump doesn’t accept that soon, then the loud minority he’s been courting will go mournfully quiet on Election Night.
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Completely useless unnecessary political gossip babble!
We've been saying he's a racist the whole time, we've been watching him be a racist the whole time, why is this a surprise or even a story?
Blog post is for white liberals.
We've been saying he's a racist the whole time, we've been watching him be a racist the whole time, why is this a surprise or even a story?
Blog post is for white liberals.
To me i still feel like closet trump supporters are trying to justify his racism
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Trump was just as racist during the last election and still got most of his votes from white women.
I know its wishful thinking but when is this Fool just going to disappear from everyone's daily lives! I mean gone without a trace.
Don't want to hear about his years in office and even want to see a presidential portrait of him in the WH.
Don't want to hear about his years in office and even want to see a presidential portrait of him in the WH.
Thats what they did with Bush, for years after he was out of office republicans acted like he never existed.
Trump with some ether
Guess racism is ok as long as you throw in some humor.
definitely won't be a blowout ala reagan vs mondale IF he loses, because there are many red states that are gonna stay red in November no matter what he does. I'll be happy even if it's close... but at this point I still give that asshole a 50/50 chance because this country is full of idiots.
Not ether - more like he is sniffing ether -
The Elizabeth Warren thing is old and played out - he has nothing left in his bag of tricks
Probably cheated?
The biggest reason Trump won in 2016 is because the Republicans spent 8 years focused on the states while the Democrats focused on the White House.
As a result, the Republicans turned the school boards, sheriff's offices, district attorney's offices, state legislators, the house, and the Senate. They used these "small" victories to limit voting registration, cut back polling stations in Democratic districts, and do intensive gerrymandering.
they set the system up so nicely that Huckleberry Hound could have been president if Trump hadn't gotten the nomination. Without the party putting in that work he would have lost by a landslide.
was that cheating? On one hand the Republicans acted squarely within the law, but on the other hand they completely subverted democracy.
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Even if he loses he'll still be on twitter talking shit daily. Him and his devoted followers aren't going anywhere
Trump knows he's going to lose so he's decided to give up on being "America's President" and just be racist white people's president. He'll be canonized by white racists just like Hitler for decades to come. They'll have his tattoos, hang his paintings next to Hitlers, chant his nonsense sayings, kill in his name. They'll elevate him to their spiritual guide. Make him legendary, watch.....
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My neighbor a Black man in his 20s is a Trump supporter and you’d never know it unless you brought it up. I don’t speak to that nigga anymore
Every week i tell someone that if you are still a Trump supporter you are stupid or racist or both there is no in between. Oh if you are black And you still support trump you are a COON.
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I.. can..... not.... wait!.... t'ill November
America is going to show its true colors... all this shit is coming to a head. millions of people are Going to vote Trump. hell i still think he's going win.
them same racist that voted for him. last time are still voting for him... and this BLM movement is going to push a few more to vote for him... white people be lying about what thier true intentions are.
America is going to show its true colors... all this shit is coming to a head. millions of people are Going to vote Trump. hell i still think he's going win.
them same racist that voted for him. last time are still voting for him... and this BLM movement is going to push a few more to vote for him... white people be lying about what thier true intentions are.
Trump didn't think of John McCain as a war hero because he got caught by the enemy. But Trump has no problem wanting to honor the Confederate traitors on the losing side of the Civil War.
Imagine that shit rolling around in the heads of people who claim to love the troops..
Imagine that shit rolling around in the heads of people who claim to love the troops..
The worst is yet to come from this idiot trust me. 
You know what though... that's fine. Let them talk and talk. Just get him the fuck out of the white house so he won't have another 4 years to nominate federal judges... and almost as importantly, I want to see them (his fans... all of them) crying in the car in November.
Truth is this Potus is so pathetic those numbers don't accurately reflect what he has done, check this:
Judicial appointments in Trump’s first three years: Myths and realities | Brookings
Russell Wheeler writes that reality is more complicated than the claims by President Trump to have made the most appointments ever to the federal judiciary. With detailed data, he dives into the specifics of Trump's impact on the courts.
www.brookings.edu
It's like he's exaggerating the lie to make it seems like he's smart for doing what a President is supposed to do when the courts need new justices.
He's a little heavy on the appellate side of things but at the end of the day
what makes it any less fucked up than it already is?
I just recently found out a nigga that I went to school with than went full rabid coon. Nigga was on facebook talking that MAGA! I vote Trump 2020, fake news, the Democrats are the oppressors..im like nigga kill yosef, i can't stand willful retardation
If a person can eloquently state their position, I can't argue against their opinion. When all you have are talking points, buzzwords, and your argument can't stand up to a second round of questioning...you aren't being genuine.
What is his reason for his support?My little brother is a Trump supporter....we fight all the time about him.....I cant change his mind..
Most niggas like that are just parroting what their masters tell them. Always the same bullshit and not one original thought or point of view. Guaranteed it’s :
Chicago
BLM & Antifa are hate groups
CNN and MSNBC are fake news
But Obama
Hillary
Whites face the most racism
Looters&Rioters
Dems founded the KKK aka the real racists
Libs/Libtards/Libbies
Alllivesmatter
Rinse repeat
That's a shame. You might be one of the few people who can get through to him.
Fuck that nigga
Good info. It mentions but doesn't key on how he is concentrating on really young judges to serve for life and be in the pipeline for SCOTUS though.... and he's nominating ones that the ABA says aren't qualified. ....and most importantly, he already seated two on the SCOTUS and I doubt that another 4 years won't give him a chance at at least two more (probably from the left leaning side too).
Truth is this Potus is so pathetic those numbers don't accurately reflect what he has done, check this:
it appears on average he has not really done anything epic with the courts that modern Presidents have not done before.Judicial appointments in Trump’s first three years: Myths and realities | Brookings
Russell Wheeler writes that reality is more complicated than the claims by President Trump to have made the most appointments ever to the federal judiciary. With detailed data, he dives into the specifics of Trump's impact on the courts.
It's like he's exaggerating the lie to make it seems like he's smart for doing what a President is supposed to do when the courts need new justices.
He's a little heavy on the appellate side of things but at the end of the day
what makes it any less fucked up than it already is?
They're defense of Trump is blaming other things. In no facet of life, can you be asked to defend your position or actions, and an acceptable response would be to bring up something else. Own that shit. You like a fuck up. Be fucking proud of it.
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