A Sitting President, Riling the Nation During a Crisis
Even by President Donald Trump’s standards, it was a rampage: He attacked a government whistleblower who was telling Congress that the coronavirus pandemic had been mismanaged. He criticized the governor of Pennsylvania, who has resisted reopening businesses. He railed against former President Barack Obama, linking him to a conspiracy theory and demanding he answer questions before the Senate about the federal investigation of Michael Flynn.
And Trump lashed out at Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger. In an interview with a supportive columnist, Trump smeared Biden as a doddering candidate who “doesn’t know he’s alive.” The caustic attack coincided with a barrage of digital ads from Trump’s campaign mocking Biden for verbal miscues and implying that he is in mental decline.
That was all on Thursday.
Far from a one-day onslaught, it was a climactic moment in a weeklong lurch by Trump back to the darkest tactics that defined his rise to political power. Even those who have grown used to Trump’s conduct in office may have found themselves newly alarmed by the grim spectacle of a sitting president deliberately stoking the country’s divisions and pursuing personal vendettas in the midst of a crisis that has Americans fearing for their lives and livelihoods.
Since well before he became president, Trump’s appetite for conflict has defined him as a public figure. But in recent days he has practiced that approach with new intensity, signaling both the depths of his election-year distress and his determination to blast open a path to a second term, even at the cost of further riling a country in deep anguish.
His electoral path has narrowed rapidly since the onset of the pandemic as the growth-and-prosperity theme of his campaign disintegrated. In private, Trump has been plainly aggrieved at the loss of his central argument for reelection. “They wiped out my economy!” he has said to aides, according to people briefed on the remarks.
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A Sitting President, Riling the Nation During a Crisis
Even by President Donald Trump's standards, it was a rampage: He attacked a government whistleblower who was telling Congress that the coronavirus pandemic had been mismanaged. He criticized the governor of Pennsylvania, who has resisted reopening businesses. He railed against former President...news.yahoo.com
The Dems have been attacking President Trump since he announced he was running for President - glad he’s attacking back :}
