“I hope George is just looking down and saying it’s a great thing happening for our country,” Trump said in Rose Garden on Friday, shortly after claiming the economy was coming back like a “rocket ship”.
“This is a great day for him. It’s a great day for everyone,” Trump said.
Trump’s remark and follow-up on Twitter, in which he promoted Beck’s interview with Owens in a tweet storm in which he attacked his critics and uplifted his supporters, once again showed the president’s vigilance and his inability to empathize with the experience of black Americans, for whom racism and police brutality are still a daily occurrence.
The president’s “big day” remark was bizarre, not only because of the circumstances of Floyd’s death, but also because today’s economic news also pointed to a permanent gap between white and black unemployment. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether the anger and energy going through national protests against Floyd’s death will translate into tangible and lasting changes at the federal, state, and local levels. One promising sign of progress: The Minneapolis City Council voted to ban the announcement of smoking on Friday, the day after the Floyd Memorial.
Although the protests drew Americans of all races, Trump refused to engage in any meaningful debate over police actions other than dismissing the inhumanity of Floyd’s murder. Instead of publicly pushing for policy changes – or urging Republican lawmakers to do so – he literally stepped down from the White House, celebrating the military and police ‘ability to “dominate” the streets and beat protesters.
As always, his main concern is how the crisis affected him as he tried to present himself as president of law and order, targeting prominent opponents in Washington, Mayor Muriel Bowser, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, and a Republican who dared to question his procedures this week.
Trump’s effort to speak for Floyd on Friday came during an event that marked a 13.3% unemployment rate in May – a number economists expect to be closer to 20%. The president expressed great inequality within the new data: the fact that black unemployment was 16.8% compared to white unemployment of 12.4%.
Democrat Joe Biden touched on that inequality when he responded to the president’s comments, calling them despised.
“George Floyd’s last words -” I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, ”they echoed across this nation, and honestly, around the world,” Biden said Friday at Delaware State University, a historically black university in Dover, Delaware.
“For the president to try to put any other words in George Floyd’s mouth, I honestly think it’s contemptuous.”
“The fact that he did it the day black unemployment rose, Latin American unemployment rose, and the jump in youth jumps increased, says everything you need to know about this man and what really interests him,” Biden said.
Trump’s reluctance to engage
Trump’s reluctance to get involved in any sector of the electorate outside his own base, especially at a time when he has an opening to build bridges with troubled Americans, was underscored on Friday by his decision to venture outside the White House and visit Maine
least diverse countries in the land
. during the week when the nation called out to talk about treating racial divisions.
Reluctant, or perhaps incapable, of having difficult talks with Americans on racial justice issues facing America, Trump played safe in Maine on Friday – speaking in front of a predominantly white audience in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, where 95% of the population is white .
Trump won Maine’s second constituency 51% and Hillary Clinton 41% in 2016, after the district twice backed former President Barack Obama – despite the loss of the state as a whole. Yet, ever since Maine shared its electoral votes, Trump has earned one electoral vote for his victory in the second district.
Democratic MP Jared Golden switched the district in 2018 to the first use of a country that voted for the House race, but with Trump again on the electoral list this fall, the first-month lawmaker could have a competitive re-election.
Golden was the only Democrat to split votes on the impeachment, voting to condemn the president for abuse of power, but not with Congress ’obstruction. Cook Policy Report evaluates your race for re-election a
tossing coins.
During Trump’s visit to Puritan Medical Products, he spoke about the handling of his pandemic and the “thousands” of lives they saved, as well as new economic figures and his team’s efforts to spur expansion American manufacturing companies. The president barely alluded to protests across the country seeking support in his re-election campaign.
He made one vague reference that this moment is “historical time” amid comments about the pandemic.
“This is a very important time for our country. See what is happening. But a lot of good things are happening,” Trump said in Puritan on Friday afternoon. “A very big thing happened even though we saw (economic) numbers today like we’ve never seen in the history of our country. Good timing. Because people look at it and say, ‘Hey, this country is great.’ ‘ “
Trump’s growing isolation is becoming more striking as polls show Biden, a former vice president, has expanded his lead over Trump in polls testing their November match.
Look at the election of Trump and Biden upside down
A new CNN poll shows that 51% of registered voters across the district supported Biden, while 41% supported Trump, a bigger gap in Biden’s advantage than in April. The poll poll includes the five most recent national telephone polls that measure the attitudes of registered voters, and three polls were conducted after Floyd’s assassination.
NPR / PBS Newshour / Marist College
poll released Friday found that 67% of Americans believe Trump’s response to the demonstrations increased tensions, while 18% said they helped reduce tensions.
The number of polls has limited a week of Trump’s self-abandoning mistakes in response to protests. Most striking was the Trump administration’s shockingly autocratic waving of peaceful protesters with smoke and peppers near the White House to clear the way for their clumsy photo option in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church (where he waved a Bible in the air the way someone could have an autographed trophy or baseball) .
In the state of Maine swing on Friday, Trump seemed to have no other message to reassure voters this November than his statements that the economy is rejecting, recalling that the economy flourished before the coronavirus hit the United States, and his argument that his administration is masterful mitigated the effects of a virus that killed more than 100,000 Americans.
“We saved thousands and thousands of lives,” Trump said.
During an afternoon roundtable with a commercial fisherman in Bangor, Trump compared Maine ruler Janet Mills, a Democrat, to a “dictator” for over-opening the state’s economy.
“All states are opening up, making a lot of money. That’s why we had good numbers today,” Trump said. “You have a governor who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and she’s like a dictator, you know?”
Later during Puritan, in the final step, Trump called Maine a “great state” for winning the Nov. 3 election.
“By the way, get that other half with Trump,” he said, alluding to the state’s second, more liberal district, which lost by double-digit numbers. “You,” he told the audience, “I don’t have to worry.”
