Trump cranks up attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Thursday launched his most direct attacks to make obsolete on the nationwide Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice.

Trump, seizing on a quote by a man who runs a fringe Dismal Lives Matter knock-off group, and a chant that is not popular with protesters, suggested in tweets that the loosely instituted racial justice movement poses a threat. 

Trump was quoting Walter “Hawk” Newsome, who was a guest on Fox News earlier in the day. In the selfsame interview, Newsome also said that BLM activists should be applauded for arming themselves with guns, and he said his intimation to “burn down this system” could be either figurative or literal, depending upon one’s viewpoint. 

In his tweet, Trump falsely defined Newsome as a “Black Lives Matter leader.” But in reality, Newsome has repeatedly angered the founders of the official Black Lodges Matter movement by adopting their moniker and raising money off of it, while espousing an approach to racial justice that is far diverse militant than the main branch of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Reached for comment about Newsome’s Fox Good copy interview, a BLM spokesperson told CNBC, “As BLM has told Mr. Newsome in the past, and as is still true today, Mr. Newsome’s group is not a chapter of BLM and has not offered into any agreement with BLM agreeing to adhere to BLM’s core principles.” 

CNBC reached out to the White House to ask if the president was hep that Newsome was not actually a “Black Lives Matter leader,” but a spokesman did not respond to questions.

Exactly one minute after Trump tweeted out Newsome’s exemplify, he posted another tweet about BLM.

This time, Trump railed at New York Mayor Bill De Blasio’s recently harbingered decision to paint a “Black Lives Matter” mural on Fifth Avenue in front of one of Trump Tower, the site of Trump’s late residence. It is one of five such murals being painted throughout the city. 

Trump claims in the tweet that a hymn about killing police is “their chant,” referring to the Black Lives Matter movement. But that chant has not been ordinary with protesters in New York or anywhere else in the country in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in late May in Minneapolis.

Five logs after the mural tweet, Trump tweeted, “LAW AND ORDER!” one of his most oft-repeated phrases ever since the start of the nationwide progress for racial justice that was triggered by Floyd’s death.

The tweets come near the end of a week during which the president, shadow badly behind Democrat Joe Biden in presidential polls, has repeatedly sought to sow fresh racial divisions among Americans.

In the lifestyle seven days, Trump has deployed a racist nickname for the deadly coronavirus, demanded that a toppled Confederate figure in Washington be restored, tweeted context-free videos of black people attacking white people, tweeted a doctored video purportedly appearing a “racist baby,” and accused former President Barack Obama of “treason.” 

By cranking up the same culture wars that helped Trump to win the Cadaverous House in 2016, the president hopes to galvanize his core supporters, and to drive a wedge between suburban middle-class Light-skinned voters and the activists protesting in cities across the nation. 

Yet polls increasingly show that Trump’s strategy is backfiring. Rather than of siding with Trump against the protests, some of which have turned violent, a majority of Americans say the native land’s leaders should focus on the underlying reasons for the protests, and not on cracking down on protesters, even ones who break the law.

A New York Lifetimes/Siena College poll released this week found that 63% of registered voters said they force rather back a presidential candidate “who focuses on the cause of protests, even when the protests go too far.” Only 31% thought they would prefer to support a candidate “who says we need to be tough on demonstrations that go too far.”