It looks like President Trump hasn’t yet lost all of his incredibly sharp political instincts.
In an interview Thursday with Sean Hannity, as the final night of the Democratic convention was taking place, Trump said that the opposition party was staying away from discussing anything about police and the wild riots in major cities because, “It’s a losing subject for them.”
Why yes, it is, and yet Trump has been uncharacteristically reserved about picking up that $500 bill off the ground.
“They (Democrats) are also not talking about law enforcement and our great police,” Trump said. “They’re not talking about that. They don’t walk to talk about it. You see Portland, and you see New York with a 358% increase in crime, some number that’s just crazy, and you see what’s going on in Chicago. … They don’t want to talk about police because it’s a losing subject for them. They (Democrats) want to defund the police, and they want to abolish police.”
All of that is true, but Trump is sitting on his thumb. He didn’t even show up for the interview in person. It was done by phone.
There are, right now, two stories defining this campaign: the pandemic and the violent chaos engulfing cities that was an outgrowth of the Black Lives Matter protests. Trump can’t effectively attack Joe Biden on the coronavirus because while everyone opposes its spread, only Trump is in a position to do something about it.
But he can go in on the law and order line because Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris have emboldened it and excused the violence, the looting, the arson, and the vandalism.
Normal voters want to know that they’re going to be safe from what Trump at his inauguration called “American carnage.”
He knows the issue works for him. Now is the time for him to take advantage.
