How Donald Trump is losing America's support after his reaction to Charlottesville violence

Post-Charlottesville, Trump is haemorrhaging support and the once buzzing White House is an echoing man cave. Philip Delves Broughton asks if his presidency can survive the great desertion
Solo mission: President Trump cuts a lonely figure in the White House earlier this summer
AFP/Getty Images

As President Trump blew up the last, delicate bridges connecting him to America’s political centre this week, the White House quietly removed the bike-share station installed in its grounds under President Obama.

This is an administration hurtling backwards both politically and culturally to the 1950s, to a time when the Ku Klux Klan was unafraid to flex its political muscle, and politicians never thought of bicycling to work.

On Tuesday afternoon Trump descended in his gold lift from his gold apartment in Trump Tower and turned a press conference about plans to invest in America’s infrastructure into a torrid harangue. He galumphed around America’s most sensitive national issue — race and the history of slavery — with all the grace of a monster truck.

His response to the Klansmen and neo-Nazis who marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, at the weekend, armed to the nines, carrying torches and yelling “Jews won’t replace us!” was to equate their actions with those of the crowds who attacked them. “You had a group on one side that was bad,” he said. “You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now.”

It was a point that would have elicited boos at a low-rent university debate. For the President to make it left his advisers staring at their shoes.

John Kelly, the former Marine Corps general recently appointed White House chief of staff, looked ashen, as if he would rather be in his old job, the comparatively simple matter of bringing order to post-Saddam Iraq.

Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs who is now the President’s chief economic adviser, let it be known he was “disgusted” and “upset” by his boss’s remarks. Mr Cohn is Jewish, as is Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, and Kushner’s wife Ivanka, who converted to Judaism. Neither of them have said anything about Trump’s equivocation.

The far-Right, though, was giddy and energised. David Duke, a Holocaust denier and former Imperial Wizard of the Klan, praised Trump for his “honesty”.

In 20 garrulous minutes Trump took his presidency to a place his more opportunist supporters — those other than the 35 per cent of voters who are willing to support him whatever he says or does — never wished to go.

People gather at a candlelit vigil in Charlottesville
AP

Many corporate CEOs had been willing to stand beside the President in the hope of a bonanza of tax breaks and deregulation. They calculated that it was worth it to ignore aside his boasts about grabbing women, or his denigration of Mexicans as rapists, or even his years of asserting, against all the evidence, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya rather than Hawaii.

But Charlottesville blew away the last shrivelled fig leaf from their compromise. The CEOs’ sums turned from black to red. Yesterday they decided to disband their presidential advisory councils. It was easier than facing the slow leaching of members, as one by one they quit rather than having to keep on explaining their association with Trump to their employees, shareholders or even their own families.

If a President committed to economic empowerment, streamlining regulations and unleashing business cannot hold on to this lot, he is well and truly toast. All he has left is a rump of freaks and uniques who might enjoy the perks of the presidency a little while longer but cannot hope to get anything serious done.

The Obama White House used to hum with visitors from Hollywood and Silicon Valley to Wall Street, from Jay-Z and Beyoncé to chefs and athletes, intellectuals and statesmen. Trump’s version is an echoing man cave, a place where reputations go to die.

The New York Times reported today that “the President’s top advisers described themselves as stunned, despondent and numb. Several said they were unable to see how Mr Trump’s presidency could recover, and others expressed doubts about his capacity to do the job.” The conservative tub-thumpers at Fox News were said to be unable to find a single Republican to defend Trump on-air.

Trump himself, though, was said to feel “liberated” after his fusillade. The mealy-mouthed political class had got what they deserved.

Donald Trump during the press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan
REUTERS

The problem is, Trump needs that political class to get anything done. Yet this week he has been attacked by almost everyone: from the most senior generals to the titans of industry, and from the leaders of his own political party to foreign leaders who now see him as irreparably damaged.

When he became President he was given the benefit of the doubt by people who hoped he would be more serious in office than he had been as a campaigner. But the benefit has evaporated and the doubt has turned to contempt.

Trump considers himself a master of negotiation. But he now cuts an absurd and isolated figure. His last political asset is his rancid volatility. Just an eighth of the way into his term his political capital is spent.

There is always room in America for serious discussion of its sometimes troubled history, of the stain of slavery and the unending effort required to make it right. White, male alienation and the Black Lives Matter campaign are significant factors in modern American life.

It is reasonable to ask whether the statues across the South venerating generals who fought the Civil War to preserve slavery should be kept up or taken down. But these issues are subtle and sensitive. They require intellect, empathy and acute historical awareness. Certainly not a yelling match in a Manhattan lobby about Klansmen.

Trump has reason to trust his political instincts over those of his advisers. He got elected President after all. But this week he blasted his rhetorical blunderbuss squarely into his own foot.

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