As protests continue to flare across the country, President Trump and his top aides cannot settle on the next steps the White House should take to ease tensions after the latest death of an African American man detained by a white police officer.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has been pushing for the president to deliver a formal address to the nation to emphasize his support for law and order and police officers, a familiar trope for the Republican Party and one that typically plays well with its base.
Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, along with several other top aides, argued against such a move, fearing the tone could alienate key voters ahead of the November election, including African Americans whose support the administration has been trying to court.
An address would also detract from Trump’s message of trying to restart the economy as quickly as possible, allies said.
Trump’s last formal address — in mid-March from the Oval Office, dealing with the growing coronavirus crisis — was not viewed internally as a success, since the White House had to later clarify several points from the hastily written speech, which Trump appeared uncomfortable delivering.
Trump has instead turned to Twitter to offer his opinions.
He tweeted on Saturday that if protesters breached the White House’s fence, they would “have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.”
And he called on Democratic officials to “get MUCH tougher” or the federal government “will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests.”
Elected officials on both sides of the aisle said today that Trump should instead focus on unifying the nation or decline to address the country at all.
“He should just stop talking,” said Democratic Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper. “He speaks and he makes it worse.”
“It’s sort of continuing to escalate the rhetoric,” added Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on CNN. “I think it’s just the opposite of the message that should have been coming out of the White House.”
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, also urged Trump to help “calm the nation” and to stop sending “divisive tweets.”
Her comments followed a press conference Saturday where Bowser noted how Trump’s reference to the “vicious dogs” was “no subtle reminder” of segregationists who would attack African Americans with dogs.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said today that some of Trump’s tweets were “not constructive.”
Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, said he talked with Trump on Saturday and told him that it’s beneficial for him to “focus” on the death of Floyd and to “recognize the benefit of nonviolent protests.”
The infighting over a potential speech signifies a much broader question facing the White House, according to interviews with a half-dozen senior administration officials and Republicans close to the administration:
How can the president soothe and lead a nation at a moment when more than 100,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, another 40 million are unemployed, and protests are raging through the U.S. after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last Monday?
Amid this swirl of crises, the Trump administration and its staffers have struggled to find the right tone and path to calm the country.
Trump keeps veering between expressing condolences for the death of Floyd, as he did in Florida at the SpaceX launch on Saturday, and then tweeting out far harsher rhetoric on protesters, looters or the Democratic leaders of the cities in which the protests have occurred. Trump made no public appearances on Sunday and did not leave the White House.
By this morning, he appeared to have found a new target and scapegoat by pinning blame for the protests on Antifa for the protests, a loose collection of radical groups that define themselves by their opposition to fascism.
“Congratulations to our National Guard for the great job they did immediately upon arriving in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last night,” Trump tweeted. “The ANTIFA led anarchists, among others, were shut down quickly. Should have been done by Mayor on first night and there would have been no trouble!”
In addition to starting to cast protesters as lawless individuals or anarchists, the president and his staff have been mulling others ways to respond by hoping that federal law enforcement can possibly charge the four white former police officers involved in the killing of Floyd — they have all since been fired — or by bringing African-American leaders to the White House.
One of the four former officers, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.
Bashing Antifa is expected to be a familiar refrain this week from the Trump White House.
Trump previewed this by tweeting on Sunday that he intended to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization, a move that critics say he lacks the legal authority to do since Antifa is not, in fact, an organization.
Aides still have not settled on the best course of action, as the president continues to hear advice from top staffers, Republicans close to the White House, political advisers and members of his reelection campaign.
New polling out Sunday from The Washington Post and ABC News only added a sense of urgency, since it showed Trump trailing Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, by 10 percentage points nationally, whereas two months ago the same poll showed the two candidates just a few points apart.
Several White House aides and Trump allies have argued over the weekend against any type of Oval Office address in the coming days.
“The protests are not just connected to the death of George Floyd. They are connected to the overall frustration with the economic downturn and coronavirus,” said Jason Miller, a former senior communications adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign. “There are no magical words of unity that can fix someone’s missing paycheck, or no magical words of unity on George Floyd.”
The pressure on the White House to respond to the protests will only continue this week, as the nation looks to Washington for leadership.
Friday will bring potentially more bad news, when the Department of Labor will unveil the latest national unemployment statistics.
Advisers have warned that the unemployment rate could rise from its current 14.7 percent to over 20 percent.
Aides also plan to closely watch the coronavirus infection rates and how those play out as every state eases its standards on social distancing and the reopening of local businesses.