Opinion | Don’t Feed the Troll in the Oval Office (original) (raw)
Opinion|Don’t Feed the Troll in the Oval Office
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/opinion/trump-immigration-democrats-response.html
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Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality.
- June 28, 2018
A Trump supporter put up a sign on her car during a rally in support of the border wall prototypes on March 13 in San Diego.Credit...Kyusung Gong/Associated Press
It is hardly news that President Trump has deliberately provoked liberal outrage, as a candidate and as president. But in case anyone is still wondering whether his inflammatory language is the result of design or impulse, recent comments from current and former White House strategists are revealing.
Last month, an unabashed Stephen Miller, Trump’s ever-calculating White House aide, described this tactic to the Atlantic as “constructive controversy — with the purpose of enlightenment.”
“Our thing is to throw gasoline on the resistance,” Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to Trump, told Vanity Fair last December. “I love it. When they talk about identity politics, they’re playing into our hands.”
Trump and his allies are capitalizing on a decades-long fight over immigration policy that they believe will galvanize more voters on the right than on the left, generating sufficient enthusiasm among Trump’s supporters to counter an energized Democratic electorate. The unpleasant reality is that a number of recent analyses based on psychological, sociological and political research provide a logical basis for the incendiary Trump-Miller-Bannon strategy.
While Trump told reporters in January, “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed,” he and his loyalists believe that they will thrive on repeated charges from the left that he and those who vote for him are racist. Those charges — perhaps paradoxically — serve to intensify the resentment of conservatives and Republicans toward liberals.
Trump’s rhetoric — migrants “infest” and “invade our country” — is intended not only to intensify the anti-immigrant views of his supporters, but also to encourage liberals and Democrats to accuse him and his supporters of bigotry. Trump’s tactics are based on the conviction of many of his voters that opposition to immigration is not a form of racism. They deeply resent being called racist for anti-immigrant views they consider patriotic and, indeed, principled.
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