In just the past week, Donald Trump has retweeted a video of a supporter chanting “white power,” was revealed to have failed to act upon intelligence that Russia was paying bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers, and lost a SCOTUS ruling on his border wall funding that will make it impossible to fulfill his 2016 promises to supporters.
Trump needs a win, so he’s reaching. He’s looking for any reason to celebrate a win, but he doesn’t have much to celebrate.
His rhetoric on school choice is in line with the Republican party’s view on public education, or those “failed schools” that the majority of students in this country attend. Funds offered to private schools by the state could easily be redirected to improving those “failed schools” and, in return, the students who attend them, but why not celebrate when parents can yank their children out of schools rather than fight for them?
Trump’s endless bashing of China over COVID-19 is just more racist rhetoric from the president. Cases in the United States came from Europe, not China, but it’s easier to convince his supporters to hate people who don’t look like them.
It is in his last tweet of the hour that his “us versus them” set-up comes. Trump relies on that strategy quite a bit, as it worked out well for him in 2016. This time, it’s “us” (white people) against “them” (black Americans fighting for racial equality). “We” are trying to preserve a history of slavery, while “they” are asking us to stop demoralizing slave holders. But despite a pandemic, a rising unemployment rate, and massive civil unrest, Trump is focused on statues, and his rabid fanbase is thrilled about it.
Twitter, however, was not so thrilled. Read some of their comments below:
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
