The Daily 202: Trump acts like the president of the Red States of America

THE BIG IDEA: Donald Trump often behaves as if he’s first and foremost the president of the states and the people who voted for him.

That’s at odds with the American tradition, and it’s problematic as a governing philosophy – especially in a moment of crisis. Trump’s initially tone-deaf response to Charlottesville underscores why.

Animated by grievance and congenitally disinclined to extend olive branches, Trump lashes out at his “enemies” – his 2020 reelection campaign even used that word in a commercial released on Sunday — while remaining reticent to explicitly call out his fans – no matter how odious, extreme or violent.

Channeling his inner-Richard Nixon, who kept an enemies list of his own, candidate Trump often claimed to speak for “a silent majority.” After failing to win the popular vote, President Trump has instead governed on behalf of an increasingly vocal but diminishing minority.

The president has held campaign-style rallies in places like West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Indeed, almost all his political travel has been to places he carried last November. He keeps stacks of 2016 electoral maps to hand out to people visiting the Oval Office so he can point out the sea of red. He speaks often about his “base,” preferring to preach to the choir rather than evangelize for his policies. “The Trump base is far bigger & stronger than ever before,” Trump wrote on Twitter last week.

— Apparently the president sees “the Trump base” as distinct from the GOP base: “Trump’s job approval rating in Gallup Daily tracking is at 34% for the three-day period from Friday through Sunday — by one point the lowest of his administration so far,” Frank Newport wrote yesterday. “Republicans’ latest weekly approval rating of 79% was the lowest from his own partisans so far, dropping from the previous week’s 82%. Democrats gave Trump a 7% job approval rating last week, while the reading for independents was at 29%. This is the first time independents’ weekly approval rating for Trump has dropped below 30%.” In the latest Gallup polling, 46 percent of whites approve of Trump’s job performance. That’s the same share Barack Obama had at this point in 2009. But while only 15 percent of nonwhites support Trump, 73 percent backed Obama.

— Trump appeared reluctant to make his brief remarks yesterday, in which he explicitly condemned the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He tacked them on to a hastily arranged speech after praising his own stewardship of the economy, two days after he did not specifically condemn the “Unite the Right” rally and only after an outpouring of criticism from Republican leaders for that omission. Reading from a teleprompter, Trump said that the displays of hatred and bigotry in Charlottesville have “no place in America.” (Read a transcript of the president’s comments here.)

— The president was still more tepid than members of his own Cabinet. “Though Trump has regularly employed the phrase ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ to describe other attacks in the United States and the Middle East, he chose not to echo Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s conclusion that the violence in Charlottesville met the Justice Department’s definition of ‘domestic terrorism,’” David Nakamura and Sari Horwitz note.

— Conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin describes Trump’s performance as “classic narcissistic behavior”: “The sole determination of whether Trump likes someone (Saudi royalty, thuggish leaders, etc.) is whether they praise him. It’s always and only about him. He has been far more antagonistic toward Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his own attorney general … than he has been toward white nationalists because the former were disloyal in his mind, the only unforgivable sin in the Trump White House. …

“The white nationalists in Charlottesville did not hide their intentions. They were there to revel in the Trump presidency, which explicitly told them it was time to ‘take their country back,’” Rubin notes. “Former KKK grand wizard David Duke left no confusion as to his followers’ admiration for the president: ‘This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in, that’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back, and that’s what we’ve got to do.’”

— Meanwhile, alt-right leader Richard Spencer dismissed Trump’s statement as “nonsense,” telling reporters at a news conference yesterday that “[only] a dumb person would take those lines seriously.” Spencer also said he did not consider the president’s words to be a condemnation of the white nationalist movement. “I don’t think he condemned it, no,” said Spencer, whose group advocates for a form of American apartheid, per Business Insider. “Did he say ‘white nationalist?’ ‘Racist’ means an irrational hatred of people. … I don’t think he meant any of us.” Asked whether he considers Trump an ally, Spencer replied that while he didn’t think of Trump as “alt-right,” he considers the president to be “the first true authentic nationalist in my lifetime.”

— In this context, Trump’s announcement that he is mulling a pardon for Joe Arpaio can be viewed as a strategic sop to mollify some of the most xenophobic elements of his nativist base. The president told Fox News in an interview published yesterday that he is “seriously considering” a full pardon to the former Arizona sheriff, who was convicted last month of criminal contempt for ignoring a federal judge’s order that he stop racially profiling Hispanics.

“I might do it right away, maybe early this week. I am seriously thinking about it,” the president told Gregg Jarrett. He called Arpaio a “great American patriot” who has “done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration”: “Is there anyone in local law enforcement who has done more to crack down on illegal immigration than Sheriff Joe? … He doesn’t deserve to be treated this way.”

Arpaio, who remains a “birther” and has insisted he has proof that Obama was not born in Hawaii, lost reelection last year. He was an early Trump endorser – going to Iowa for the announcement – and linked himself closely with the GOP nominee – speaking in primetime during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Radley Balko, the author of the book ” Rise of the Warrior Cop,” argues that Trump is giving racists “a reassuring wink” by floating the Arpaio pardon. “I very seriously doubt Arpaio would ever get jail time. Federal judges aren’t known for sending octogenarian ex-cops to prison. But his name and reputation ought to be stained. If any cop deserves that, it’s Arpaio,” he writes on The Watch.

“In 2011, the Justice Department concluded that Arpaio’s deputies had engaged in the worst pattern of racial profiling that the DOJ had ever investigated,” Balko recounts. “That report found that Arpaio’s deputies routinely put Spanish-speaking prisoners in solitary confinement as punishment for their inability to speak English. … 1 in 5 traffic stops during Arpaio’s immigration sweep’s involved Fourth Amendment violations. … Latinos were four to nine times more likely to be pulled over than non-Latinos. … Accusations that Arpaio’s deputies continued to harass Latinos were affirmed by another federal judge in 2013. Arpaio then launched an investigation of that judge. That report also found that Arpaio was spending so much time harassing Latinos that his department was neglecting violent crime.

“On multiple occasions, federal judges have found that Arpaio’s jails are unconstitutionally inhumane, most notably when it comes to diet, health care and mental health. The vast, vast majority of the people in Arpaio’s jails are being held on suspected immigration violations. … Arpaio in fact once boasted that his jails were akin to a ‘concentration camp.’”

“He faces up to six months in prison at his sentencing, which is scheduled for Oct. 5,” Matt Zapotosky reports. “Jack Wilenchik, Arpaio’s attorney, said after Arpaio was convicted that the former sheriff would appeal to get a jury trial. … A Justice Department spokeswoman said she was not aware of the president’s remarks but would wait until action was taken before commenting.”

“I would accept the pardon,” Arpaio told Fox News, “because I am 100 percent not guilty.”

— Bottom line: If Trump pardoned Arpaio, it would add another data point to the cementing narrative that the president lacks respect for the rule of law.

Trump speaks to business leaders, including Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier, at the White House. (Evan Vucci/AP)

— In stark contrast to his caution after Charlottesville, it took Trump just 54 minutes to attack the chief executive of Merck by name on Monday morning after he resigned from the president’s manufacturing council. Kenneth C. Frazier, one of the few African American chief executives in the Fortune 500, touted the virtues of diversity in a statement. “I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism,” he said. “America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal.”