Four years ago, President Trump made an unprecedented splash in American politics by rejecting political correctness, pledging to stand up to the left-wing mob, and running on upending the Washington, D.C., “swamp” political culture, all in brash style.
But as civil unrest sweeps the country, some conservatives are frustrated. Trump is not doing enough to counter the cultural revolution that took root over the last few weeks, they say, and neither are other Republicans and groups on the Right.
“Black Lives Matter has declared this cultural civil war. Democrats have declared a political war. And Republicans are still sitting there like deer-in-the-headlights wondering what’s happening,” John Cardillo, a television host and former officer in the New York Police Department who supports Trump, told the Washington Examiner. “Unless they adopt a wartime mentality, political wartime mentality, cultural wartime mentality, I think they’re in a lot of trouble.”
What started as protests about race relations and policing, sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black man, after being held under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer, has evolved into a much larger, if loosely organized, movement.
Those on the far Left call to defund or abolish police departments. Anything deemed symbol of racism or oppression is rejected, and those who make insensitive comments or acted improperly, sometimes years ago, are publicly exposed and sometimes pressured to resign from their jobs.
Confederate monuments started being torn down — a move that many conservatives approved of and applauded. But protesters also toppled statues falling far outside the Confederate spectrum: Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ulysses S. Grant; national anthem lyricist Francis Scott Key; and Catholic missionary Junipero Serra.
The underlying principle of the protests has “nothing to do with police brutality, very little to do with George Floyd,” Inez Stepman, a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, told the Washington Examiner.
“This is clearly a pivotal point in our country’s history where we’re seeing the mainstreaming of the idea that America was never great,” Stepman said, as well as the idea “that slavery — not liberty and not 1776, not ‘all men are created equal,’ but slavery — is the cornerstone of our republic.”
Because Trump is president, she said, he is in the best position to counter that argument directly. She suggested he make a speech defending Western civilization on Independence Day in front of Mount Rushmore or the Lincoln Memorial.
Trump hasn’t completely ignored the social upheaval. He called on armed forces to break up protests outside the White House and threatened, but refuses, to nationalize the National Guard to do the same in other cities facing violent demonstrations.
“Right now, I think it’s great sitting back and watching this catastrophe,” Trump told the Daily Caller when asked why he hasn’t sent the National Guard to Seattle to stop its anarchist, police-abandoned “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.” Trump said, “When I watch, it’s showing how bad that city’s system of government is because they’re all leftist Democrats running all these places that have these problems.”
He revived his call to make burning the American flag a crime — a move that would require amending free speech protections in the Constitution.
During a Saturday campaign rally in Tulsa, his first since the coronavirus lockdowns started in mid-March, Trump spent roughly 18 minutes combined throughout his Tulsa rally, in bits and pieces, addressing cultural issues such as the protests and rioting, statue-toppling, his Democratic presidential opponent Joe Biden supporting rioters, restoring law and order, and respecting American traditions.
“The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments — our beautiful monuments — tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control. We’re not conforming,” he said at one point.
But much of his remarks on the cultural unrest appeared to be written for him and read from a teleprompter.
The president spent just as much or more time during his one-hour, 40-minute rally extemporaneously responding to those who criticized him last weekend for drinking water with both hands and walking slowly down a ramp after a speech to West Point graduates and explaining how he got a better deal on new Air Force One planes (14-minute and 6-minute stretches, respectively).
The vague threats and disjointed statements are not enough to satisfy some conservatives.
“Trump has done nothing in response to the anarchy all over the country,” conservative blogger Matt Walsh tweeted Monday. “The desperate rationalization offered for this is that Trump is respecting state’s rights. The problem is that he’s said many times that he can and will get involved any minute now. But then does nothing.”
“This administration has talked to the game when it comes to Black Lives Matter and antifa. But when it came time to actually act, I only saw an executive order on monitoring police,” Cardillo said, referring to an order Trump signed last week aimed at encouraging police reforms.
Arguing against the “emotion-driven” executive order on police reforms, Cardillo argued that police are already “incredibly restrained” from acting improperly and that the order is based on a false premise. Statistics on police shootings show that in 2019, more unarmed white people than black people were fatally shot by police.
“Where’s my executive order for declaring antifa and Black Lives Matter domestic terror organizations?” he said. “He verbally addressed it well, but I want to see action. I’d like to see an executive order banning the ability to pull down statues of American presidents.”
Asked about the criticism, Trump campaign deputy press secretary Ken Farnaso pushed back.
“Any honest voter can see that whether it be the 200+ conservative court judges confirmed across the bench, the two conservative Supreme Court confirmations, massive deregulation, lower taxes, or staunch pro-life principles, President Trump’s track record has proved that his policies are right for America,” Farnaso said.
“Not only is President Trump the jobs president, he’s the law and order president protecting our nation from radical left-wing Democrats. Against all odds, President Trump has reshaped and solidified a conservative firewall to protect this country against the socialist policies that have come to define the Democrat Party,” he said.
