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'He is a destroyer': how the George Floyd
protests left Donald Trump exposed
As cities reel under protest and violence, Black Lives
Matter leaders say the president has failed his country
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Mon 1 Jun
2020 06.00 BSTLast modified on Mon 1 Jun 2020 06.01 BST
“Americans
watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our
streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence
personally, some have even been its victims. I have a message for all of you:
the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon – and I mean
very soon – come to an end.”
These were
the words of Donald Trump, not in May 2020 but July 2016, as he accepted the
Republican presidential nomination at the national convention in Cleveland. For
many observers, there was a distinct echo of Richard Nixon’s 1968 acceptance
speech – “We see cities enveloped in smoke and flame” – and a foreboding that
history could take a newly dark and dangerous turn.
For three years, the first president elected without
political or military experience rode his luck and skirted past disaster. In
the fourth year, the fates demanded payback.
Not even
Trump’s harshest critics can blame him for a virus believed to have come from a
market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, nor for an attendant economic collapse,
nor for four centuries of slavery, segregation, police brutality and racial
injustice.
But they
can, and do, point to how he made a bad situation so much worse. The story of
Trump’s presidency was arguably always leading to this moment, with its toxic
mix of weak moral leadership, racial divisiveness, crass and vulgar rhetoric and
an erosion of norms, institutions and trust in traditional information sources.
Taken together, these ingredients created a tinderbox poised to explode when
crises came.
Trump, they
say, was uniquely ill-qualified for this moment. He tried to wish away the
threat of the coronavirus and failed to prepare, then paid no heed to how
communities of colour bore the brunt of its health and economic consequences.
As unrest now grips dozens of cities, he speaks an authoritarian language of
“thugs”, “vicious dogs” and “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”.
The nation
waits in vain for a speech that might heal wounds, find a common sense of
purpose and acknowledge the generational trauma of African Americans. That
would require deep reading, cultural sensitivity and human empathy – none of
which are known to be among personal attributes of Trump, who defines himself
in opposition to Barack Obama.
“He is
obviously in way over his head,” said LaTosha Brown, a civil rights activist
and co-founder of Black Voters Matter.
“He doesn’t
have a clue. He’s a TV personality. He has a cult following that’s centred
around this white power broker persona rooted in white supremacy and racism.
Wherever he goes, he carries that role and that kind of persona, but ultimately
right now with what we’re looking for in this country is real leadership. He is
incapable of providing that because that’s not who he is.”
Brown
added: “He’s a personality. He’s used to these dog whistles and, instead of
trying to uproot division and seeing that the citizens are actually in pain and
hurting, he doesn’t have the capacity to address that. He actually adds fuel to
the flames and shows how fundamentally intellectually disconnected he is from
what is happening and also how ill-prepared he is as a leader to respond to
that.”
Trump is
not much a child playing with matches as an arsonist hellbent on burning it all
down, Brown warned.
“If it
would take the destruction of the country for him to protect his position, he
is willing to do that. He has shown that he is willing to kill every single
thing in this country, including its people, if it protects him.
He’s willing to
kill democracy. He is willing to kill any sense of real respect or trust in his
government
LaTosha Brown
“He’s
willing to kill democracy. He is willing to kill any sense of real respect or
trust in his government. He is willing to kill America’s international and
global relationships. He is a destroyer.”
Rashad
Robinson, the president of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy group, said
of the current moment: “This is the type of controversy that Trump feels most
at home in.
“He didn’t create hostility and division, but he
incites it. He creates incentives for it to thrive. He has elevated and put
people around him that do that as well.”
The
president’s suggestion of moral equivalence between white nationalists and
anti-fascist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 failed to loosen
his grip on the Republican party. Perhaps it tightened. At the start of this
re-election year, feeling emboldened by his acquittal in a Senate impeachment
trial and a robust economy, Trump was confident of his re-election chances.
Now, with
health, economic and social crises feeding off each other, polls show him
trailing rival Joe Biden. But the situation remains volatile and unpredictable.
The president has sought to scapegoat anti-fascist protesters, and there would
be little surprise if he returned to Nixonian law-and-order rhetoric to rally
Republicans and lay a trap for Democrats, portraying them as “soft on crime”.
“Get tough
Democrat Mayors and Governors,” Trump tweeted on Sunday, even as protesters
gathered outside the White House for the third straight day. “These people are
ANARCHISTS. Call in our National Guard NOW. The World is watching and laughing
at you and Sleepy Joe. Is this what America wants? NO!!!”
Biden has
billed the election as a battle for the soul of the nation – the potential to
lurch deeper into disarray with a second Trump term, or to reset, rebuild and
plot a new direction. The stakes keep getting higher by the day.
Robinson said: “Presidential leadership, when it comes
in the form of real action, is incredibly important.
“When a
leader can hear the demand and the concerns and work to solve the problem,
that’s the power of democracy. President Trump is not interested in either.
He’s not interested in leading or solving problems. Like a lot of things he
does, he’s treating this as a game.
“The
problem here is that we can focus this simply on Trump or we can also focus on
all of those folks that have enabled Trump: the Republican leadership, the
corporation that may make statements in support of this work but, on the other
hand, do all sorts of things to prop up, support, donate to Donald Trump. You
don’t get Trump and Trumpism without a whole host of institutions and
individuals that support and enable him.”
DeRay
Mckesson, a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement, said: “Nobody’s a
magician, so I don’t expect Biden to change everything on day one, but the
demands should be for him to change as much of this by the end as humanly
possible.
“If Trump
has reminded us of anything, it’s that the government can move as fast as it
wants to and nobody, no person of colour, no poor person is going to win if
Trump is the president again. So I’m not interested in Trump. I am interested
in a plan from Biden’s team around ending police violence. I think that needs
to come now. I think it is, frankly, late, and I’m hoping to see it soon.”
Trump’s
unconventional inaugural address in January 2017 is best remembered for a
single phrase: “American carnage”. His entire presidency may be
remembered for it too.
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