Donald Trump, Jr., the President’s eldest son, thinks that his father is getting a raw deal. In a recent appearance on “Team Trump Online”—a nightly video series that serves as a substitute for campaign rallies and often attracts more than a million viewers—he complained that his father is having to wage war against “the deep-state guys” and unchecked attacks from “influencers on the other side.” He said that each reporter at the White House briefings “has an agenda, and that is to destroy Donald Trump.” Joe Biden “can’t remember where he is fifty per cent of the time,” Trump, Jr., said, but he can count on the “media lackeys” who are the “marketing wing of the Democrat Party.” The Democrats, he added, are “becoming the party of socialism and communism.” That includes Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib—“you know, the Hamas caucus in Congress.” As for the covid-19 outbreak, which has caused more than eighty thousand deaths in the U.S. to date, he said, “China basically screwed the whole world.”
Venom and victimization largely define the President’s public persona, and the same holds true for the online campaign. Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee in early March, and the covid-19 pandemic put a halt to barnstorming a few weeks later, but the rhetoric of Trump’s campaign has barely budged. On March 12th, as the coronavirus crisis was taking hold in the United States, it e-mailed its supporters a photograph of Trump, ruddy face fully made up, a flag pin in his lapel, sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, looking steely. The e-mail said that there is “no room for partisanship, and the President is calling on both parties in Congress to unite.” The very next day, when Trump declared a national emergency, the campaign reverted to form, blasting “Sleepy Joe” and “Crazy Bernie.” Last weekend, after the Justice Department dropped its charges against Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I., the campaign crowed, in a fund-raising text, “Justice for Gen Flynn! A witch hunt from day 1! all gifts tripled to drain the swamp.”
Anyone who has attended Trump’s rallies, where thousands of fans in maga hats whoop and cheer at his insults and diatribes, can attest that the President, ever a showman, knows how to play to his target audiences. And, yet, as Biden edges into the lead in key states, such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida, pollsters and political strategists are questioning whether Trump’s perennial pitch can carry him to victory on November 3rd. His political base is loyal but narrow. When Democrats scored heavily in the suburbs in the 2018 midterms, and captured a majority in the House of Representatives, it was women voters who made the difference. A recent Quinnipiac poll in Florida showed Trump lagging behind Biden among women, and also among two groups that delivered crucial support in 2016: voters over the age of sixty-five and voters who dislike both candidates. When I asked Douglas Schwartz, the director of the Quinnipiac poll, about the survey, he said that Biden does better among both groups on honesty, leadership, and empathy. “These numbers are a warning sign for his campaign,” Schwartz said of the President. Continue reading.