Donald Trump stokes fear and conspiracy on path to 2020
"Some of you guys are out there. I mean it's genius, but it's bad," Trump told a crowd including fringe social media personalities and conspiracy theorists who carry his message.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump spent Thursday feeding the fires of fear and conspiracy he thinks he needs to keep burning to stay in power beyond 2020.
The administration finalized plans to target undocumented families in mass raids announced in advance -- perhaps for maximum political effect -- which are sowing anxiety in 10 cities.
Covering up a reversal in his bid to add a citizenship question to the census, Trump said liberals want to hide "illegal aliens in our midst" and questioned the loyalty of his opponents.
"This is part of a broader left-wing effort to erode the rights of the American citizen," he said.
At a "social media summit" of invited conservatives , Trump tried to redefine free speech as information favorable to him and warned Democrats were attempting a communist takeover.
"Some of you guys are out there. I mean it's genius, but it's bad," Trump told a crowd including fringe social media personalities and conspiracy theorists who carry his message.
It was a glimpse of the bunker mentality shaping Trump's reelection campaign, rooted in themes of national identify and patriotism, the singling out of outsiders and the demonization of Democrats as extreme radicals who want to destroy America.
Trump's bet is that a fired-up base will counter the liberal enthusiasm stirring in the Democratic presidential primary and offer him a narrow but genuine path to a second term.
In many ways, Trump's entire presidency has been an exercise in base management, given his aversion to the political center.
And the President is a master of distraction -- the tumult he stirred all day meant that the focus shifted from his Labor Secretary Alex Acosta's struggles to explain a non-prosecution agreement he approved a decade ago for accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Yet Trump's political maneuvering was especially flagrant on Thursday, recalling the scorched earth phase of campaigning in 2016 when populist guru Steve Bannon was an adviser and Trump's stark convention and inaugural addresses.
Commentators have often remarked that Trump has authoritarian instincts. US democratic safeguards and a robust public square prevent the repression that sustains dictatorships. But Trump's language and deliberate tearing at cultural and political divisions have few parallels in modern American politics, even if on most days -- unlike Thursday -- his rhetoric has lost the power to shock.
There is no guarantee this will work in 2020. Moderate voters outside Trump's red state heartlands were alienated by his explosive tone on immigration in the midterm elections. The President's strategy could also inflame Democratic base turnout. But his political course was set years ago, meaning that a maximum grass-roots turnout is his best and perhaps only hope of reelection. There is a method in his polarization.
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Without a script to protect him, Trump admitted that his social media supporters are liars and deceitful conspiracy theorists and propagandists. He just doesnt think there is anything wrong with it
What a freak show of neo-nazis (Gorka included), looney tunes (Villa) and thugs.
Donald Trump stokes fear and conspiracy on path to 2020
It would appear he has not changed the 2016 playbook.
My thoughts as well Luther.
I think he's getting worse.
For a long time now, over half of Americans have told pollsters that they will never vote for Trump under any circumstances. He's pretty locked in at 45% tops, unless he can substantially lessen the amount of voters who come out and vote for the Democratic candidate and thus lower the total number of votes ,which would then increase his percentage of the pie. The only way he can accomplish this is to turn the election campaign into a garbage fire.
Why do we tolerate this?
The Democrats need to worry less about what Trump says, and tend their own mess of a message. The party has been appropriated by the far left nut jobs who have come up with a wacky agenda of all they want to do if elected.
Luckily, the voters don't appear to be buying the lies and crap the left wing is trying to sell them. What's the likely end result of all this democrat propaganda.....
Trump will be reelected...and it won't even be close
The Republicans will gain several seats in the Senate
The Democrats will again lose the House.
This will happen because the Dems have shown they can't lead or govern, and they persist in putting the interests of illegals and special interest groups ahead of those of US citizens. Simply being against Trump and trying to get rid of him is not a winning strategy.
Don't say you weren't warned.
Donald Trump should resign from office TODAY. He is completely unfit to be president of the United States and disgraces every one of us every day he is there.
Is there no other Republican that can conduct the policies you want?
I will agree with this portion of it Greg.
This I will sort of disagree with due to the fact that the GOP controlled both the executive and legislative branches of government for Mr. Trumps first two years and neither led nor governed.
"Fear and Loathing in the Rose Garden", sad only because it is hilarious that these right wing nuts can't grasp the use of how social media works or the difference between an opinion and the line that gets crossed into hate speech.
There is a difference between opinions and hate speech. This group of aggrieved conspiracy nuts want to spew hatred and their own lack of understanding about the rules on social media is crazy.
They don't read the rules, they forget what the rules are, they go to extremes into the land of conspiracies, conjecture and into the realm of hatred but then cannot understand when they are banned for their own extremist rants filled with craziness and hatred.
The fact that Trump is so ignorant that foreign "bot" accounts followed him and when twitter removed all the fake accounts Trump lost "followers" that weren't even real people. Insane.
Oh I think they DO grasp the how it works, they DO read the rules, they DO remember what the rules are but they don't want the rules to apply to them and they insist that it should work in their favor.
There have been a couple of discussions on here about this and it became obvious that all too many here think that Facebook, Twitter and Google are obliged to open their platform to any and all speech.
I find that hypocritical because those same people are ardent supporters for allowing business owners to deny the LGBT community services based on religious animus. I guess Facebook, Twitter and Google need only claim that they have a religious objection to hate speech and conspiracy theories.
BTW, this is what Trump said about free speech yesterday:
So it looks like Trump is all for labeling certain speech 'very dangerous' and I presume censoring that speech.
It was also revealed yesterday that, "Donald Trump's 2020 reelection campaign on America Social Media will be directed by Sebastian Gorka, the Defacto Director General of Putin's Troll Army, out of The Internet Research Agency in Saint Petersburg, Russia". Truth or speculation? Who knows here in Trump Land?