The NPR Politics Podcast - President Revives "American Carnage" Message

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

In a speech Friday at Mount Rushmore, President Trump returned to the divisive "law and order" rhetoric and white identity politics that fueled his 2016 campaign. That's despite signs that the message is not as resonant this election cycle.This episode: political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and White House reporters Ayesha Rascoe and Franco Ordoñez.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Amy from Dayton, Ohio. I'm here with Mac, Holmes, Marisol, Kurtz, and Roscoe, kittens I've been fostering the last few weeks, who, as you may have guessed, are named after some of my favorite NPR folks. They go back to the Humane Society soon, but they've been great little listening buddies the past couple weeks. This podcast was recorded at 2.07 p.m. on July 6th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, like these little boogers hopefully finding their new homes. Enjoy the show. Oh, I heard a Roscoe in there and I was like, oh, that's a familiar name. I know. Hey there, it is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics.

I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Franco Ordonez. I also cover the White House. Well, we are back, of course, with fresh news about President Trump and what he did over the 4th of July weekend. Perhaps feeling the heat from some slipping approval ratings, he spent the weekend doing some high-profile speeches. There was one here in town. It was very military heavy. It was complete with aircraft flyovers and all of that stuff. But the night before, there was a speech that got a bit more attention. It was at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, and he took a very dark, foreboding tone. Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, to fame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.

Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, to face our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they're doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive. But no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country and all of its values, history, and culture to be taken from them. It seemed like this speech was an answer to all of this huge movement that we've seen of anti-racism, anti-police brutality, marches and protests around the country. And this was really President Trump's response to that.

We've seen movement. We have seen statues, as the White House likes to remind us, of all sorts of historical figures being torn down. But we specifically see movement against Confederate statues and that symbolism. And this was President Trump leaning into that and saying, these are radical leftist mobs who are here to participate and know, participate in cancel culture, and he is standing against it. Yeah, he kind of portrayed it as a speech about protecting American ideals, of protecting U.S. monuments, even looking up at Mount Rushmore. But, you know, like Aisha said, in reality, it was a very divisive and a very combative speech. It was not a campaign rally, but it certainly had the feel of one with people chanting, you know, four more years. And, you know, he really dug into those divisions,

you know, painted a very black and white picture of us versus them. The them there, he really seemed to be making the point that the them is, it's coming from inside the house. Your fellow Americans are undermining, like some of these protesters are undermining what America stands for, is the case he was making. And the whole speech really kind of called to mind that American carnage speech at his inauguration, in my mind. Aisha, you brought up those statues, but Trump wasn't very specific. He talked about some statues, but he didn't get too into specifics about exactly what particular instances he was upset about, right? He was not specific about what statues that he was talking about. And I think that's because it gets a little complicated when you start getting into the specifics of what exactly the heritage is that you're protecting.

Because when you start talking about the Confederacy and the Confederate flag, that obviously is not everybody's heritage. He's trying to appeal to his largely white base and play up white grievances. Yeah, I mean, it's really that, you know, broad strokes of I'm here trying to protect your ideals, your traditions, America's traditions without getting deep into the specifics. I mean, that issue came up at the briefing today. Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked a lot specifically about the Confederate flag, and she really had no good answer on the specifics. She kept saying in the aggregate that people were depicting NASCAR fans as racist. But when she was asked whether the president and whether the White House supported the Confederate flag, she kept repeating that he had no opinion on whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.

And that's, you know, that's pretty significant that the president of the United States, President Trump, who has a lot of opinions on a lot of things, doesn't have one on the Confederate flag. All right. Well, and let's get into one big reason that the Confederate flag is in the conversation right now. And that is NASCAR. This morning, Donald Trump was on Twitter attacking NASCAR's lone elite black driver, Bubba Wallace, and also talking about NASCAR's position on the Confederate flag. Yeah, he seemed to be appearing to kind of criticize NASCAR's decision to ban the Confederate flag from its events and its properties. I mean, he said specifically in his tweet that the, quote, flag decision has hurt NASCAR's ratings. Now, reporters at the briefing today really pushed Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on this. She seemed to say that the president was not

criticizing NASCAR's decision. She seemed to say, repeat over and over again, that the president had no opinion on the flag itself. But again, I mean, it seems pretty clear when a president says that the NASCAR's decision to remove the flag has hurt ratings. He's definitely making a point there. And it was really revealing seeing how the press secretary really struggled with that question. And President Trump tweeted just now, as we're talking, he tweeted about the Washington football team and the Cleveland Indians. And basically what he said was these teams are coming under fire right now. They've been coming under fire for a very long time because the names are considered to be racist against Native Americans. And in this tweet, he ends it by saying Indians like Elizabeth Warren must be very angry right now, which is a racist statement.

And so President Trump is leaning into this. I mean, he's saying it with his chest. These are the things that he wants to focus on right now. These are the things that he wants to talk about. These sorts of painful issues for a lot of people in the U.S. He wants to kind of dig in deep and keep going. President Trump launched his campaign calling Mexican immigrants rapists and saying that Mexicans immigrants aren't are are coming here and they're not the best people who are coming here. And it looks like he's looking for another foil. And that foil happens to be people on the left, those in the, you know, the quote unquote left wing mob. And he's really going down to that, you know, pretty low denominator.

Right. And we have a lot more to say about that, especially his strategy. So let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk more about Trump digging in on this and his campaign strategy. I'm Jen White, the new host of NPR's 1A. Take what you hear on Up First and dive deeper with 1A. This show listens to the beating heart of America. Expect a dynamic debate that asks America what it wants to be. This is a show for those who are relentlessly curious. Join me next time on 1A. And we're back. We've talked about the political downsides of the president weighing in on things like systemic racism and related cultural fights, for example, this thing he just tweeted while we've been talking right now

about American professional sports teams named after Native Americans. So, Aisha, is the campaign making the case that this, this kind of race-based cultural argument he's constantly making, are they saying this is the best approach what they seem to be saying is that they are going to you know lean in and let president trump be president trump and go with his instincts i don't know that they have much choice because he's going to be who he's going to be they would argue that he is protecting American values. And there are some on the right who do think that this is the right fight to pick, even if they're not maybe thrilled with every part of this. They think that fighting for quote unquote American values. And of course, the question

is always what are these American values and who are these Americans who you're fighting for? Sure. But there are people that feel like this can work for him. You know, he doesn't even seem to be trying, though, to reach beyond his base. I mean, he's kind of almost given up on the middle, which is so fascinating, because, you know, historically, at least certainly in modern history, you know, presidents always were kind of trying to, you know, get flush out that middle voter and get those. President Trump doesn't seem to really think about that at all. I mean, our own Mara Lyson said a few weeks ago that there

really is no modern president who has been as aggressive as a cultural warrior as President Trump. Right. Well, and speaking of doing that kind of outreach in a campaign, we had a new ad that came out this weekend from former Vice President Joe Biden, where he makes a very broad outreach to Americans who Biden says are hurting. It references both the coronavirus and the Black Lives Matter protests. Today, people are hurting, scared and angry. But to heal this kind of suffering doesn't take brute force. It takes empathy and understanding. And so Biden is making it plain, empathy and understanding. I'm that I'm the candidate for that.

Right. Which is very much sort of brings us to the opposite of what we started out this podcast talking about, that Trump speech at Mount Rushmore. Now, one other thing I wanted to get at, a very sort of obvious point, perhaps, is that a thing that didn't come up a lot in those speeches is coronavirus, despite the fact that it's dominating all of our lives right now. And I wanted to ask the two of you, would it do him any good right now to bring it up to even try to be reassuring? Or would that just be a lost cause for him? Well, I think he's showing that he wants little to do with that. The latest coronavirus task force briefings have been outside of the White House. And that's, you know, because President Trump is in campaign mode. He wants to be focused on showing the country is getting back to normal, not an example of turning back to where we were a few months ago. Even Vice President Pence has talked about that repeatedly,

trying to make the argument that we are not where we were a couple months ago, yet we are seeing record numbers in some parts of the country of cases. And it's a very difficult moment, I think, for President Trump, and he needs to be showing the country going cases. And, you know, it's a it's a very difficult moment, I think, for President Trump, and he needs to be showing the country going back to normal. He wants to show leadership, you know, that message of the coronavirus going up really works against him. So they're, they're going to, you know, something to focus on other things. There are things that President Trump does have that he could talk about that would appeal certainly to his base and also maybe to independents. He could talk about, you know, how his judicial appointments, he can talk about what he's done on immigration, his tax cuts, all this stuff that he has done and that he says that he can build upon in a second term.

But that really doesn't seem to be much of the focus of his Twitter feed. And if you look at that as, you know, kind of where President Trump's mindset is, but he does have these things that he could talk about. All right. Well, we're going to leave it there for now, but you can help keep the conversation going in our Facebook group at n.pr slash politics group. It's a place to meet other fans of the podcast, ask questions, and civilly talk about politics. A link to the group is also in our episode description. Until then, I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Franco Ordonez. I also cover the White House. And thank

you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.