POLITICAL STRATEGY
SIMON BARBER: Trump driving racial tension in bid to provoke rivals
Donald Trump evidently reckons his best hope of a second term is to keep baiting his adversaries
Anger at the status quo and loathing for his opponent, far more than his own attractiveness, drove the fluke that landed Donald Trump in the White House. If he is to survive and have a chance at a second term, he evidently reckons his best hope is to keep baiting his adversaries to act in ways that trigger the ire and hate of his base. That is what his "on many sides" blame allocation for August’s violence in Charlottesville was all about. He’s a provocateur, not a closet neo-Nazi or Ku-Kluxer. He regards such fringe ethnonationalists as "losers", and there is nothing lower in his hierarchy of bad. But if his enemies want to accuse him of being a racist, he’s fine with that. In fact, he courts it. Witness his repellent quest to prove Barack Obama was not born in the US. "The longer they [Democrats] talk about identity politics, I got ‘em," Trump’s Rasputin, Stephen Bannon, said. "I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with ...
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