Trump tarring moderates with a radical brush
Trump lit racial bonfire in ‘Squad’ attacks because he sees them as key to his re-election.
He said as much in his ninth angry tweet of the day on the subject. “The Dems were trying to distance themselves from the four ‘progressives’ but now they are forced to embrace them,” he said. “That means they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA! Not good for the Democrats.’
Trump’s logic in attacking the four Democrat women of colour — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley — is to persuade his voting base that they are the face of today’s Democratic Party.
It is not true, but that doesn’t mean that Trump’s campaign will fail.
The four women, all freshmen Democrats, have assumed an outsized public profile and have become media darlings in part because they represent the more progressive, more diverse, youth wing of the party.
Led by the photogenic and highly quotable 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC, the informal group has advocated policies well to the left of recent Democrat presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
The Squad is pushing for positions on climate change, border security, immigration, healthcare and taxation that, if adopted by their party, would amount to the most dramatic leftward lurch in American politics in the modern era.
Trump believes, possibly with good reason, that this agenda will not be accepted by mainstream Americans, at least not at this point in their history. Throw in the fraught issue of race and The Squad’s acceptability to Trump’s largely white voting base dwindles even further.
Trump has especially focused his attacks on Omar, a 37-year-old, Muslim, Somali-born immigrant who has made a series of foolish and offensive comments criticising Jews.
She also made clumsy comments that saw her accused of being flippant about the 9/11 terror attacks. This has given rich pickings to the President, whose base is wary of immigrants, especially Muslims.
For all these reasons, it is in Trump’s interests to keep The Squad in the news as a warning to his base about what may befall them if they don’t vote for him.
The reality, however, is that The Squad is more of a PR campaign than a genuine political movement. The grand old lady and powerbroker of the Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, said as much last week when she sniffily dismissed their noisy advocacy in the most blunt manner. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn’t have any following,” she said. “They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.”
The notion that Pelosi and her moderate Democrat colleagues might be quelling the party’s more radical fringe was not good news for a president who wants to push the Democrats to adopt extreme policies to make them unelectable.
So he decided to pick a fight with The Squad himself, knowing that Pelosi and her fellow Democrats would have no choice but to unite to condemn his attack.
That is precisely what happened, with Pelosi having to defend The Squad, presumably through gritted teeth, in the face of what she rightly called a xenophobic attack from Trump.
As a result Trump has labelled all Democrats — not just The Squad — communists, socialists, anti-Semites and above all anti-American.
This is patently dishonest but Trump cares more about his political future than he does about promoting social cohesion. The fact that Trump believes such divisive rhetoric will help him says much about the polarisation of American politics.
An important part of Trump’s strategy in all of this has been to appropriate nationalism and patriotism as a Republican virtue, rather than as a bipartisan American virtue.
Trump’s claim that The Squad hates America because they are critical of its failings has opened up an instant division of its own.
Three of the four Squad members were born in the US but they came from parents who are Puerto Rican, Palestinian, Somalian and African-American.
Republicans say they should not be so critical of their country, given that the US allowed their parents to settle here and gave them a shot at the American dream, which each of the children has fulfilled given that they are in congress.
But in reality, The Squad, whatever you may think of them, are behaving as any political opposition does — pointing out the country’s problems and advocating policies designed to fix them.
Trump’s decision to declare war on The Squad is an early skirmish in the much bigger battle to come and is a taste of how he plans to fight this campaign.
It promises to be no less divisive and bitter than the campaign that propelled Trump to the White House in 2016.
Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia
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Donald Trump has chosen to light a racial bonfire by attacking “The Squad” because he sees these four minority liberal congresswomen are a key to his re-election.