The Hate of the Insurrection: Donald Trump’s 2020 Campaign and the Assailant Shooting of Scalise
As the political environment continues to get worse, a sense of menace and danger is again gathering around another American election.
Donald Trump is considering a 2024 campaign and is facing little backlash from his party despite the insurrection’s example of where the politics of malevolence can lead.
Less than two years ago the country saw a peaceful transfer of power after a rancor that had stained the previous president’s term came to an end.
This coincides with painful and far from complete investigations into what happened after the 2020 election. On Monday, for instance, on the first day of the trial of five alleged members of the Oath Keepers militia charged with seditious conspiracy, jurors heard how senators cried as they hid from Trump’s mob.
The former President dialed up the hate another notch last week with a social media post that accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, with whom he has a strained relationship, of having a “death wish” and flung racism at his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. In another escalation, Trump recently slammed FBI agents as “vicious monsters” over the lawful search of his Florida home.
One of the ex-President’s top boosters, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, also played into Trump’s politics of fear at his weekend rally in Michigan, claiming that Democrats wanted Republicans dead.
The number of threats against members of Congress increased more than 10-fold after Donald Trump’s election, according to Capitol Police figures.
Former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was left with life-changing injuries by a gunman who attacked a constituency event in 2011, killing six people. In 2017, Louisiana GOP Rep. Steve Scalise was badly wounded by a gunman who opened fire at a congressional baseball practice. CNN reviewed his public records and Facebook profile and found that the man hated both Trump and conservatives. (Sanders, who has never employed the kind of incitement that Trump is known for, was quick to condemn the shooting as “despicable” after saying the assailant “apparently” volunteered for his presidential campaign, and he made clear violence of any kind was unacceptable.)
It’s not always possible to trace each attack, or attempted attack, to specific heated rhetoric. In these incidents, politicians cannot claim their words are not said in a vacuum. The dangers of stoking fear and violence are obvious. The US Capitol insurrection made this clearer than ever. Multiple rioters testified in court cases that they were doing what Trump wanted on that day. Stephen Ayres, who pleaded guilty in the seventh hearing of the House select committee, stated that everyone was following the wishes of the former President. Or as the panel’s vice chair, Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney put it, the then-President “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”
In a nation with easy access to guns, with a recent history of political violence and where Trump and others use false claims of voter fraud as political rocket fuel, it is reasonable to wonder what dire consequences may haunt this election season.
Dem Dem Bennie Thompson, R.C.F. McConnell, O.M. Trump: The need to be better than this
Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House select committee, on Monday condemned Trump’s social media assault on McConnell and told colleagues in both parties, “We need to be better than this.”
He said in a statement that Trump’s rhetoric “could incite political violence, and the former President knows full well that extremists often view his words as marching orders.”
The rhetoric of the death wish should be condemned even by the standards of Mr. Trump. The paper said that Mr. Trump wrote in a way that did not mean Mr McConnell had a political death wish.
The former President seems to give his supporters a chance to emulate his words. His tendency to drag others down into the political gutter has contributed to the coarsening of the wider political culture, especially among Republicans who have to choose between their political careers and publicly tolerate his extreme views.
Republicans often seize upon the rhetoric of key Democratic figures to suggest their supporters are being victimized and targeted. The most recent instance was when Biden referred to Trump’s supporters as embracing “semi-fascism”. Political rhetoric should always be condemned because of its insinuations. But any objective viewing of Trump’s speeches and social media posts must conclude that he’s an incessant and deliberate offender.
The reason why is that his own party rarely condemns him. The Senate GOP campaign committee is chaired by Rick Scott, who dodged an uncomfortable question on the show when asked about Trump and McConnell.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/04/politics/trump-violent-rhetoric-analysis/index.html
The President of the United States has a Spontaneous Epidemic, but Hasn’t Derived a Nickname
“You know, the President likes to give people nicknames. So you can ask him how he came up with a nickname. During a discussion with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” Scott said that he thinks he has a nickname for him.
I am hoping that no one is racist. Scott was speaking about the way in which Trump has intimidated his party into submission through seven years of fury after he announced his first campaign.
But another critical factor is that many of the voter groups that Democrats most rely upon are relatively less focused on the issues where public concerns about Biden’s performance are greatest, and more focused on issues where anxieties are greatest about the intentions of Republicans. Ayres said that the red team cared about crime and the blue team cared about abortion and democracy. “And there’s obviously a little overlap, particularly on the inflation front. But we have become so polarized that the two different teams care about different things and are motivated by different things.”
Democratic strategists told me they wish the election could have been held earlier this summer, when there were more concerns about abortion rights and Trump’s threats to democracy. Republicans had hoped that enough voters would focus on values instead of the economic issues, but that hasn’t been the case. But with gas prices rising again, the stock market falling, and any summertime gains in Biden’s approval rating now seemingly stalled, Democrats can’t be sure that will remain true four weeks from today.
A vice president of Way to Win said that stressing the risk of abortion rights can increase turnout among liberal-leaning groups, like young single women. But she largely agrees that most of the persuadable voters who might move to Democrats around the abortion issue have already done so and that the party during the campaign’s final stretch must ensure it has a competitive message on the economy and other daily concerns. “The reality is everybody is always going to be focused on the things that are affecting their everyday life,” she says. I don’t think it’s a good idea to be considering the economy or abortion.
The push and pull between competing priorities were demonstrated in a flurry of Senate debates in the first week of general election. Last week in Arizona, the Republican challenger, Blake Masters, came out of the gate very strong and kept the Democrats on the defensive by persistently linking him to Biden while the conversation initially focused on border security. As the discussion moved to abortion and election integrity, Kelly quickly regained the advantage as Masters struggled to explain his support of Trump during the GOP primary for a near total ban on abortion.
There are not many recent precedents for Senate candidates from the president’s party winning races in states where his approval rating has fallen that low. In 2018, Republicans lost all 10 Senate races in states where Trump’s approval rating stood at 48% or less, according to exit polls. In the 2010 Republican sweep, Democrats lost more than a quarter of the Senate races in states where exit polls showed President Barack Obama approval rating was less than 50%; only Harry Reid in Nevada and Joe Manchin in West Virginia carried their states. In 2006, Republicans lost 19 of the 20 Senate races in states where exit polls put George W. Bush’s approval at 45% or less (then-Senator Olympia Snowe in Maine was the sole exception.)
These results partly reflect the sheer intractability of our modern political divisions, which leaves fewer voters open to shifting allegiance no matter how unhappy they are with current conditions. In Senate races in Georgia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, the Republicans have been hurt by nominating Trump-aligned candidates who many voters view as unqualified, extreme or both.
The national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll released last week offered the latest snapshot of this divergence. Inflation and immigration were the most important issues Republicans had in mind. A comparable share of Democrats picked preserving democracy (32%), abortion (21%) and health care (15%). The two parties’ priorities on one side of the aisle were inflation, immigration and health care while the other side was democracy, abortion and health care. Those with four years of college experience leaned more towards abortion and democracy while those without degrees were more focused on inflation. (This survey did not include crime as an option, but it too has usually provoked the most concern from Republicans and non-college educated voters.)
Given these disparities, Democrats everywhere are stressing issues relating to rights and values, particularly abortion, but also warning about the threat to democracy posed by Trump and his movement. Since June, as CNN recently reported, Democratic candidates have spent over $130 million on abortion-themed ads, vastly more than Republicans.
Implications of a Democratic Sensitivity to Economic Policy: Insights from Tim Ryan, Geoff Garin, and Tim Youngkin
In the long run, the most important of these may be the argument that the incentives for domestic production embedded in the trio of central Biden legislative accomplishments – the bills to rebuild infrastructure, promote semiconductor manufacturing and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy – will produce a boom in US employment, particularly in manufacturing jobs that don’t require a college degree.
There are a few Democrats who emphasize those possibilities such as Michigan Gov., and Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan.
More commonly, Democrats are stressing legislation the party has passed that offers families some relief on specific costs, especially the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. Democratic pollster Geoff Garin says that highlighting such specific initiatives can allow individual candidates to overcome the negative overall judgment on Biden’s economic management. His main concern is that too many Democrats are sublimating any economic message while focusing preponderantly on abortion.
Democrats are trying to build a wall against the currents of economic discontent with the coming manufacturing boom, cost-saving provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, and case that they are giving struggling families opportunities to better their condition. But the campaign’s final weeks will measure whether that current reaches a level that breaches all of the party’s defenses.
The reality of the times makes it questionable if the Republican Party embraces its most basic instincts. Republican leaders often allow and embrace a twice impeached ex- President with clear authoritarian tendencies who in occasioned an insurrection to try to overturn a democratic election. They are elevating Trump followers who have built their careers in his image or who lied about the election.
Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s mansion last year with a subtle campaign strategy. The ex-businessman sent sufficient “Make America Great Again” messages to ensure turnout in pro-Trump rural counties because he spoke about the handling of gender issues in schools. In Washington, DC suburbs where parents are frustrated by Covid-19 lock ups, he was careful not to make them angry with the education message.
“The winning team is the winning team – elections have consequences,” Youngkin said, urging all Republicans voters to get behind Lake, but also encapsulating the ideological choice he must make for a future in the party.
There is nothing ostensibly wrong with a political party prioritizing a single-minded focus on winning power. Politics is the way to go about things. And successful parties and leaders understand election victories are paramount. Democratic presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton were known for doing what needed to be done to win, reshaping their own principles if necessary. Johnson, a former Senate majority leader, was ruthless when it came to wielding his authority. And more recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not dominated the House for nearly two decades without being determined to use her power.
For a party that used to be proud of its heritage of promoting global democracy against tyranny, this is a huge leap. Republicans who defended such values, which were once prized in the party of Lincoln, against Trump – including Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake – were ostracized. Flake did not run for reelection and Cheney, the vice chair of the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, lost her primary this summer to a Trump-backed challenger. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene is a star in the party because the Trump base loves her.
The most striking recent example of the naked pursuit of power could be seen when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy rushed down to Mar-a-Lago to make up with Trump soon after criticizing him over the Capitol insurrection. The California lawmaker knew that his party’s hope of a House majority and his own dreams of being speaker hinged on a rapprochement with Trump and his base voters.
McConnell rode out the madcap eruptions of Trump’s term and chafed at his selection of questionable midterm candidates and meddling in key races, which has complicating the party’s mission of wining Senate control, even in places that should have been a slam dunk in a national environment that favors the GOP.
McConnell’s affiliated super PAC is even spending in New Hampshire, where the GOP nominee has said he wouldn’t vote for the Kentucky Republican for leader. But it’s another pickup opportunity that could bolster a possible GOP majority.
The impulse to win control of Congress at all costs was on display when a group of US senators flew to Georgia to rescue Hershel Walker.
Joe Biden’s “mega-MAGA”: How a Candidate Whose Campaign is Going to Florida will be criticized for his Voting Career
A woman has accused the pro-Trump nominee of paying for a abortion despite his campaign pledges to support a ban on the procedure. CNN has not independently confirmed the allegations, but they pointed out the risky nature of a candidacy that probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for his friendship with Trump.
The two Republican surrogates behaved like they were supporting Walker instead of any other candidate.
He has been stumping for the GOP candidates in Michigan and Georgia, but he is also appearing with the Republican candidates who beat out Trump this year.
His endorsement is valuable to the Lake campaign in the race for governor, but his rising star power in Trump world gave him a strong incentive to go. And it explains the hug after his speech in which he embraced the kind of political personality who wouldn’t have been let anywhere near his events last year.
When President Joe Biden goes to Florida on Tuesday for a final campaign stop, he will be able to make the argument against “mega-MAGA” as his advisers have been waiting for.
The decision of Biden to campaign in Florida, where neither the gubernatorial or Senate race is too close to call, is putting scrutiny on his abilities to sway voters in the final weeks of the campaign. It also highlights the extent to which Biden has struggled to convince voters to view the election as anything other than a referendum on him and his party amid economic unease.
It is a remarkably low-key campaign effort by a president facing what could be among the biggest rebukes of his political life: Republicans are poised to retake control of one or both houses of Congress, an outcome that would reshape politics in Washington and likely end any hope that Democrats have of making progress on abortion rights, gun control, police reform, voting rights or tax fairness.
Biden makes that argument to voters in Miami Gardens on Tuesday, a week from Election Day. The rally comes as Biden has sharpened his attacks on Republicans and painted an increasingly grim picture of America under a Republican majority in Congress.
He drew on Republican proposals to argue that the GOP will hurt the economy and put popular entitlements at risk by threatening to raise the debt ceiling. Biden will make a special appearance before the rally in Florida to call attention to GOP Social Security and Medicare proposals.
Scott was the head of the Republicans’ campaign arm and he laid out a policy agenda that would put Medicare, Social Security and other programs up for a vote every five years. The state is also home to former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis, both likely 2024 presidential candidates whom Democrats have been eager to cast as the faces of a new, more extreme Republican Party.
Biden is making a contrast argument with Florida being the backdrop in the closing weeks of the election.
Biden is holding the rally in Florida largely at the urging of the state’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Gov. Charlie Crist, according to two Democrats familiar with the decision.
In an interview with CNN on the eve of Biden’s visit to his state, Crist was effusive about the president’s willingness to campaign alongside him in the final stretch of the midterms, as he hopes to deny DeSantis reelection.
Crist said that he is the most important man in the world. Everything you need to know about Florida is answered by the fact that he is coming down to the state a week before the election.
More than any other issue, Crist said he hoped – and expected – Biden to zero-in on the topic of abortion rights when the president headlines the rally for Crist and Senate nominee Val Demings. DeSantis’ record as governor on the issue speaks for itself, Crist said, adding that abortion rights is the “number one issue” in his race.
When Biden visited Florida to see the damage from Hurricane Ian the president and the congressman put aside their differences in order to emphasize an effective response.
Despite not talking about a national run during the debate with Crist, the governor still felt that Biden was his main rival, even after making clear that he was still interested.
While Democratic officials insist Biden is first and foremost focused on the upcoming midterms, campaigning on behalf of the Democrat running to unseat DeSantis this week could in part offer a preview of what a Biden-DeSantis matchup could look like in 2024. He wouldn’t commit to a four-year term if he were to win reelection.
The first and last questions to be asked is: What do I need to do to succeed? That is the same conversation that Trump has with himself,” said Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee.
Biden in the Wild: How he and his Party fought to survive the end of the 2016 midterm elections, and when he didn’t win
Biden insisted to reporters that more than a dozen different campaigns had requested him during the final stretch of the campaign, and he was in demand on the trail.
That is not true. There have been 15. Count, kid, count,” he said last week when a reporter suggested he hadn’t been holding many rallies in the final stretch.
Biden has watched as his reputation as a Democrat who could venture places other Democrats couldn’t has faded, what’s clear is that. As vice president, Biden was frequently dispatched to red states and conservative districts to campaign for vulnerable members of his party, often viewed as more palatable than his then-boss, Barack Obama.
But he has grown frustrated at coverage suggesting he is political albatross, according to people familiar with the conversations, arguing his policies – when properly explained – are widely popular with voters.
Democrats familiar with the decision-making acknowledged that Biden is not in demand from campaigns in the most competitive races. They argued that rallies are less valuable now that they are an organizing aspect.
The former president is in high demand as a Democrat because of the marquee races. He held rallies in four states over the weekend, and will go to Nevada and Arizona this week.
Biden is very much welcomed in his native state of Pennsylvania, where he will help boost the Senate and gubernatorial candidates next Saturday.
Biden has been in demand on the fundraising circuit, though, speaking at multiple high-dollar fundraisers nearly every week this fall to help the DNC raise a midterm record total of $292 million through September. Democrats credit Biden’s decision to share his presidential campaign list with the DNC at the beginning of his presidency for helping them raise a record amount of money.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain suggested on CNN in October that the lack of big rallies was strategic: “I don’t think rallies have proved effective for candidates in the midterms, and so we’re trying something different,” he said, noting the Obama and Trump models failed to stave of losses for their respective parties.
The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: Towards a Wave-Induced Rereentrance in the 2016 Midterm Campaigns
A professor of history and public affairs atPrinceton University is a CNN political analyst. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views he expresses are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
Donald Trump is going to make another run for the White House. On Thursday, Trump told his followers to “get ready” for his return to the presidential campaign trail – and top aides have been eyeing November 14 as a potential launch date, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Trump, it seems, is hoping to be the first person since President Grover Cleveland to win two non-consecutive elections.
It would certainly send a lot of waves through the political world if Trump ran again. Trump is arguably one of the most controversial and destabilizing political leader in contemporary US history. His presidency was enormously consequential due to the toxic rhetoric of the GOP, as well as the Supreme Court decisions like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
If the midterm campaigns have shown the Democrats anything, it is that the Republicans remain a strongly united party. Very little can shake that unity. The party did not change in substantive ways after Trump left the White House and the “Never Trump” contingent didn’t emerge as a dominant force. Congresswoman Liz Cheney was kicked out of the party.
Even with flawed candidates running for Senate seats, polls show that the GOP is in good shape going into Tuesday’s election. Meanwhile, Democrats are scrambling to defend several seats and even candidates in reliably blue states such as New York are at risk.
If Republicans do well next week, they will feel confident in their culture wars and economic talking points going into the future. And given the number of election-denying candidates in the midterms, a strong showing will likely create the tailwinds for the GOP to unite behind Trump. Although there has been copious speculation about the rise of other Trump-like Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, it’s likely they will look “liddle” once the former President formally reenters the political arena – as his formidable opponents learned in the 2016 Republican primaries.
Finally, it’s worth noting that a midterm win would energize Republican voters like little else. The out-party tends to be more prepared and motivated for political battles than the incumbent’s party, which at some level is worn down by the realities of governance.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/opinions/trump-reelection-bid-zelizer/index.html
The Return of Donald Trump: Implications for the Media and the Politics of the Trump Era and the 2020 U.S. Election
And if Trump announces his candidacy, the Department of Justice is weighing the possibility of announcing a special counsel to oversee two sprawling federal investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of national security documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. It is likely that Trump will keep attacking RobertMueller, the former special counsel who oversaw the Russia investigation. And once Trump is formally a candidate, it will make prosecuting him all the more difficult. Trump, a master of playing the victim, is sure to claim (as he has in the past) that any investigation is simply a politically motivated “witch hunt” intended to take him out of the running.
If Trump avoids prosecution, he’d surely unleash a fierce assault on the President, who could very well still be struggling with a shaky economy and divisions within his own party. And if election deniers enter positions of power after the midterms, and Trump escapes any punishment for January 6, it’s likely he will take advantage of the loyalists who have infiltrated state and local election offices to make sure that victory is his. Trump will also come to the race having been to this rodeo before, which will mean he can perfect the technique and rhetoric that put him into office in 2016. The return of Trump would allow him to direct and shape the media conversation once again. (Trump, who founded Truth Social, where he has been active since he was banned from Twitter, has not publicly indicated that he will return).
It doesn’t mean that Trump will win in 2024. It’s not clear if he can win the support of swing states after he turned off many independents and Republicans. And as we have seen with President Barack Obama’s run against Mitt Romney in 2012, presidents who have faced tough reelection campaigns can still find a path to victory.