How Radicals Help Trump

As Thomas Friedman pointed out last weekend, 

All of this street violence and defund-the-police rhetoric plays into the only effective Trump ad that I’ve seen on television. It goes like this: A phone rings and a recording begins: “You have reached the 911 police emergency line. Due to defunding of the police department, we’re sorry but no one is here to take your call. If you’re calling to report a rape, please press 1. To report a murder, press 2. To report a home invasion, press 3. For all other crimes, leave your name and number and someone will get back to you. Our estimated wait time is currently five days. Goodbye.”

How did we get here? On June 20, at his failing Oklahoma rally, Trump was in his COVID hole and still digging — “When you do testing, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, Slow the testing down — please!” What an idiot.

But Scott Jennings, a seasoned Republican political adviser, told Vanity Fair that Trump had one “very effective“ line that day about “Biden being a tool of the radical left.” And he wanted more of that because “it will resonate with wobbly suburbanites.”

That was the day of the first murder in Seatle’s police-free CHAZ/CHOP zone. That’s when radical-left craziness gained the upper hand over the mainly peaceful and effective George Floyd protests. Since then Trump’s strategy has become ever more focused on tying Joe Biden to the radical left — the socialists to the anarchists.

It was inevitable. The radicals are the Democrat’s Achilles’ heel. Biden plays well with swing voters and makes a poor target. Relative to Clinton, Biden has flipped 6% of college-educated Whites away from Trump and also 11% of voters over 65. These two groups are the main reason he’s winning. And neither the college-educated White suburbanites nor the older folks are keen on the radical agenda.

It’s not that they don’t want change. What they don’t want is a bunch of inexperienced, over-confident idealists tearing down the system because they’re sure they can replace it right away with a green, non-racist, socialist utopia.

Trump understands that.

A few days after George Floyd’s murder, videos circulated of “African-American organizers in Minneapolis putting out fires started by White protesters and asking White allies to calm down [Daily Beast, May 31].” Similar scenes occurred in other cities. 

Women from the African American Community Advisory Council, told the “demonstrators” at the Seattle CHAZ zone, “You have hijacked this! You have taken the meaning away!” They were met with boos as some grabbed their microphone and talked over them. A couple of murders and other mayhem made Trump’s “law and order” point for him, and the band of 21st-century politi-hippies was cleared out.

Standing in front of the boarded-up federal courthouse as the crowd began prying the boards off, Mrs. Hyder, a grandmother of five, chanted in the wee hours of the 55th day of protest in Portland Oregon. “The people of the U.S. need to know that moms, grandmas, and nurses are out here in the middle of the night demanding rights for everybody.” Yes, they’ve hijacked the message and “taken away the meaning.”

Portland, with its large contingent of black-clad, masked Antifa, is the poster-child for Trump’s claim that “they’re Democrat-run cities, they are liberally run. They are stupidly run.”

Portland mayor Ted Wheeler replied, “Well, the president has a complete misunderstanding of cause and effect … what they’re doing is, they are sharply escalating the situation.” I’m afraid it is Mayor Wheeler, who has misunderstood cause and effect.

Does Wheeler really believe Trump wanted to solve his vandalism problem for him? Would that be because Trump has a soft spot for Mr. Wheeler, or because Trump is noted for helping out beleaguered Democrats? If you’re dealing with the devil, as Mr. Wheeler is, you had best figure that out before you choose your strategy.

Trump’s move was smart. Escalation would leave Wheeler with a bigger problem and “prove” to most Americans that the situation was completely out of control just as Trump claimed. On the other hand, if the situation de-escalated, Trump would get the credit.

Either way, Wheeler has given Trump the opportunity to get the country used to more authoritarianism.

I imagine what happened was what Trump wanted. After all, the point he’s trying to prove is, “The Radical Left Democrats, who totally control Biden, will destroy our Country as we know it.” The worse things get in Portland, the better for Trump.

If you don’t actually want to defund the police, then don’t hand Trump that weapon. There are a dozen other ways the radical left is accidentally helping Trump. I’ll be discussing them here on zFacts, but you will find most of them in my new book, How Democrats Win: Resisting the Dark Side of Radicalism.