Biden Tries to Break Through as Trump Takes Military Footing
Trump threatened to send troops against protesters, while Biden listened to pleas for systemic change in African American lives.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump surrounded himself with armored police and his top aides to make a symbolic walk to a riot-scarred church as he sought to capture the spotlight with a dramatic threat to send the military into American cities to suppress spreading unrest.
His Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, worked to regain center stage through the flood of news, scheduling a morning speech at Philadelphia City Hall, where he planned to castigate Trump for fanning “the flames of hate,” trying to take the role of reassuring a nation on edge from days of protests around the country.
The split-screen images highlight the challenges that Biden faces in capturing attention in a nation coping with coast-to-coast protests against police brutality at the same time it’s fighting the coronavirus. Where Biden is invoking messages of empathy and unity, Trump told U.S. governors to “dominate” the protesters or be seen as “weak.”
The situation has put Biden in the position of reacting to the moves of an incumbent president given to dramatic gestures, when the former vice president has little more than words to offer in return. Biden’s best hope may be that voters view Trump’s actions as a disturbing overreach -- and indeed, the president has faced withering criticism from Democrats for using military force to clear his path of peaceful protesters for the walk to St John’s Episcopal Church.
In his speech, Biden will decry Trump’s leadership, according to excerpts released by the campaign.
Describing the scene in Lafayette Park Monday, Biden says, “We can be forgiven for believing that the president is more interested in power than in principle. More interested in serving the passions of his base than the needs of the people in his care. For that’s what the presidency is: a duty of care—to all of us, not just our voters, not just our donors, but all of us.”
The forced dispersal of demonstrators outside the White House “dishonors every value that faith teaches us,” said the top two Democrats in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The head of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, which oversees the historic church, expressed outrage.
The visit was an “abuse of sacred symbols for people of faith in this country to justify language, rhetoric and an approach to this crisis that is antithetical to everything we stand for,” said Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.
Biden tweeted Monday night that Trump was “using the American military against the American people. He tear-gassed peaceful protesters and fired rubber bullets. For a photo.”
But Biden will need to offer a proactive vision as well, to use the moment to invoke the sort of calls for racial healing that were a hallmark of the president he served as vice president, Barack Obama -- while struggling to match Obama’s rhetorical gifts.
Biden is presenting a more inclusive vision for bridging national divisions on race, counting on a Democratic base heavily made up of African-American and Hispanic voters to carry him to the White House.
But his challenge is that many black voters have long felt taken for granted by the party. And he answered directly for that when local pastors and politicians challenged him to do more than return the nation to its pre-pandemic state.
“I’ve never taken for granted” the black vote, Biden told the gathering. “I’ve never ever done that. It has to be earned, earned every single time.”
He faced pressure in his meetings on Monday to not merely express sympathy and outrage, but to offer a concrete plan for erasing the systematic discrimination that leads to killings like George Floyd’s at the hands of police.
“People are angry. I’m sure you guys are, too. I’m angry. And the fact is we need that anger, we need that to tell us to move forward,” he said.
Trump has the power of incumbency, and that of the commander in chief, and he put it on full display Monday. Religious voters were a crucial part of Trump’s winning coalition in 2016, and on Tuesday, he plans to visit the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington and then sign an executive order to advance international religious freedom.
With 53.5% of Americans disapproving of his handling of the coronavirus crisis, according to an aggregate of polls by FiveThirtyEight, Trump is using his response to the protests to strengthen his appeal to a base that favors the firm hand of law and order.
It was Trump himself who decided to make the televised walk to the church, after awaking Monday to news reports that the Secret Service had hustled him into the White House security bunker Friday night as protesters gathered outside the executive residence.
His son Donald Trump Jr. suggested his father’s walk across the park Monday evening should erase that image, tweeting, “This is the guy that the media and left just spent days telling us was a coward hiding in his basement. RT if you agree that this is what leadership looks like!”
Trump said he would deploy the military “if a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents,” suggesting he might become the first president to invoke the act without the support of state governors. The effort could face legal challenges because of the Civil War-era Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents federal troops from performing domestic law enforcement activities.
He did not say what authority he would use to deploy the military, but three people familiar with the matter said he was considering invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act.
Even some conservatives, like Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota, began to wonder aloud about Trump’s rhetoric. Yet allies of the president argue that extreme measures are justified after days of protests and violence across major American cities. In Washington, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a 7 p.m. curfew across the city, which has also been shaken by looting, arson and vandalism associated with some of the protests.
Biden’s allies and campaign spent much of Monday pointing out that he showed the demeanor of a national leader, and that his expressions of empathy and emphasis on urging restraint and keeping the demonstrations peaceful are the reason he has such overwhelming support among African American voters.
Yet he still must attract younger black voters, who have little memory of his 36-year Senate career, and need to be persuaded he can enhance their economic opportunities, and safety.
Biden’s campaign is using the Philadelphia speech Tuesday to begin that task.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
