Will President Trump Let America Burn Just to Try to Win Black Votes?

SCOOP: At a strategy and comms meeting earlier today, Trump aides general consensus was not to squash any riots that may happen tonight b/c it would hurt their chances at coalition building w/ minority communities ahead of the election.

— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) May 29, 2020

Letting looters and arsonists riot in an attempt to pander to any racial group is contemptible. But this is especially so. Donald Trump was elected President because of white Middle Americans; if he panders to anyone, it should be to them.

The most pitiful part about this rumor is that it won’t work. During President Richard Nixon’s first four years in office, the National Guard was sent in to quash black riots several times throughout the country. In 1972, he won 15 percent of the black vote. No Republican presidential candidate has won more than that share of the black vote since. In 2016, Donald Trump won 8 percent of the black vote.

May 0, 1970 – The National Guard in New Haven, Connecticut. (Credit Image: © Keystone Press Agency / Keystone USA via ZUMAPRESS.com)t

More instructive is the 1992 presidential election, which took place shortly after massive black riots in Los Angeles. The National Guard was eventually sent in to put an end to the chaos, but before they arrived, many Koreans in the city showed the world their impressive collections of firearms, and their willingness to use them in selfdefense. At the Republican Nation Convention, Pat Buchanan gave a rousing speech in support of his former rival George H.W. Bush, and ended it like this:

[T]he brave people of Koreatown who took the worst of the LA riots, but still live the family values we treasure, and who still believe deeply in the American dream.

Friends, in those wonderful 25 weeks, the saddest days were the days of the bloody riot in LA, the worst in our history. But even out of that awful tragedy can come a message of hope.

Hours after the violence ended I visited the Army compound in south LA, where an officer of the 18th Cavalry, that had come to rescue the city, introduced me to two of his troopers. They could not have been 20 years old. He told them to recount their story.

They had come into LA late on the 2nd day, and they walked up a dark street, where the mob had looted and burned every building but one, a convalescent home for the aged. The mob was heading in, to ransack and loot the apartments of the terrified old men and women. When the troopers arrived, M-16s at the ready, the mob threatened and cursed, but the mob retreated. It had met the one thing that could stop it: force, rooted in justice, backed by courage.

Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend. Here were 19-year-old boys ready to lay down their lives to stop a mob from molesting old people they did not even know. And as they took back the streets of LA, block by block, so we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country.

God bless you, and God bless America.

Liberals were disgusted by these comments. One even quipped, “It probably sounded better in the original German.” But here’s a racial breakdown of the 1992 vote:

In 2016, Mr. Trump won 27 percent of the Asian vote, not even half of what President Bush Sr. won in 1992. Plus, President Bush won more of the black vote than Mr. Trump did in 2016. So if our President wants to pander to non-whites, perhaps he could do so by crushing the rioters, and expressing sympathy for the Hmong in Minneapolis and St. Paul. They do not appear to be participating much in these riots, are surely suffering because of them, and do not get along with blacks.

President Trump’s tenure thus far has been relentlessly disappointing. This week, he has an opportunity to save it by restoring law and order across the country — by any means necessary. Everyone who will accuse him of being a “fascist” and “racist” for doing so wouldn’t have voted for him anyway.

Or maybe, he’ll let thugs everywhere do what they want.

I guess we will have to wait and see which he chooses.

Credit Image: © Ron Sachs / CNP via ZUMA Wire