America is burning – and it could cost Trump the presidency

‘The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end,’ said Donald Trump on 21 July 2016, as he accepted the Republican party’s nomination for the presidency of the United States. ‘Safety will be restored.’

Mark that down as a broken promise. On Friday, as a seething mob menaced the White House, the Secret Service rushed Mr Trump down to the emergency bunker under the East Wing. Downtown Washington has come to resemble a war zone. On Monday, police deployed cavalry and tear gas to clear Lafayette Square so the President could shoot a video of himself walking outside looking tough. In other parts of the capital, rioters carried on smashing buildings and starting fires.

At the beginning of his presidency, Trump vowed to end ‘this American carnage’. Now, as we approach the end of his first term, the real carnage seems to be just beginning. What with the Covid crisis, a terrible recession brewing, and now barbarism on the streets, how can he possibly expect to be re-elected?

Most Americans who have taken to the streets want to protest peacefully. People are horrified by the widely circulated footage from Minnesota of a police officer apparently killing George Floyd, a black man, with a knee to the neck. But righteous protest in Minnesota soon turned into riot. Unrest then spread to almost every major city in America. Looting, arson and vandalism are now rife in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, Portland, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Seattle, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Baltimore, and many other places.

In 2016, Trump made another big promise to America’s so-called ‘silent majority’. He vowed to roll back political correctness — a sickness, he said, that ‘is killing our country’. In response to Trumpism, however, America’s institutions — the media, the universities, the corporations — have only become more powerfully PC.