The president has employed the same kind of inflammatory language as George Wallace did in the 1968 campaign. Richard Nixon ran that year seeking the middle between the Alabama governor and Hubert Humphrey.
President Trump said last month that he had “learned a lot from Richard Nixon,” and many interpreted his hard-line response to the street protests of recent days as a homage of sorts to the 1968 campaign. The president’s Twitter feed has been filled with phrases famous from the Nixon lexicon like “LAW & ORDER” and even “SILENT MAJORITY.”
But if anything, Mr. Trump seems to be occupying the political lane held that year by George Wallace, the segregationist former governor of Alabama who ran as a third-party candidate to the right of Nixon. While he does not share Wallace’s most extreme positions, Mr. Trump is running hard on a combative pro-police, anti-protester platform, appealing to Americans turned off by unrest in the streets.
Mr. Trump’s talk of “shooting” looters, his bellicose denunciation of “thugs” and “terrorists,” his threats to unleash “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” and his vow to call in troops to “dominate” the streets all evoke Wallace’s inflammatory language more than Nixon’s that year. Mr. Trump has offered little empathy for the goals of peaceful protesters against racial injustice, emphasizing instead the sporadic looting and violence even as he has sought to discredit the victims of police brutality. Continue reading.