It was almost exactly a year ago that the president made his fateful call to President Zelensky. You remember -- Trump said he’d deliver the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine's protection against Russian military incursions, then he added: "I would like you to do us a favor, though...."
The resulting impeachment trial revealed that the call was really all about the upcoming election. Trump was looking -- in vain as it turned out -- for information he could use to damage presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. With this president, almost everything is about getting elected.
We’re now less than 100 days from the election and the president is desperate as he’s watched his poll numbers plummet as a result of his botched response to the pandemic.
Time to reach for the 2016 playbook and find a new enemy for Fox and followers to hate. Then, it was immigrants. Now, it is protestors in cities with Democratic mayors. Trump calls them violent anarchists. Federal troops are showing up in full riot gear in places that haven’t asked for help. They are not working with local police. They are hurting people who are protesting peacefully.
This federal overreach is very wrong and it is leading to more not less violence. The irony is that Trump would have received a deserved electoral boost if he had organized a smart federal response to the pandemic. Many lives would have been saved.
I’m Deborah Booth and that’s my perspective.
