Trump’s law and order message could backfire if he fails to get a grip on the violence

In the past week, three people have been killed amid ongoing protests in the USA. As shootings and violent riots are watched on social media by millions and endlessly dissected by the press, the inevitable question arises: how will this affect the presidential election in November? 

Many, remembering Nixon’s win in 1968, have speculated that President Trump will be the ultimate beneficiary of this mayhem as the Democrats become associated with disorder and violence. Trump himself seems to have taken to the idea adopting Nixon’s promise of “law and order” with gusto. Meanwhile, polls have also shown that Trump is more trusted on the issue by the general public than his rival for the top job, Joe Biden. 

However, a closer inspection of the polling data suggests that Biden could still be the ultimate beneficiary of the state in which the US finds itself. While Trump endlessly proclaims that the riots and violence offer a vision of America under Biden, it is difficult not to point out the obvious – that the “American chaos” has actually been taking place on Trump’s watch. 

It is also often forgotten that Nixon’s call for law and order was pitched as a call for moderation. His 1968 campaign not only distinguished him from liberal Democrats whom he accused of being soft on lawbreaking but also from violent segregationists on the political right, whose attitude was summed up in the famous quote: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”  

The extremely aggressive response to the protests and riots by Trump, who even repeated this exact quote in a Tweet earlier this year, doesn’t thread the needle in the same way. Indeed, following Trump’s infamous clearing of protestors in front the White House for a photo op, and his flirtation with calling in the military, his approval ratings tumbled. At the same time, recent polls have shown that Biden is far more trusted to handle race relations than the incumbent President.

Even if the public support for the protests, initially very high, has begun to fall, running a campaign centred on law and order might leave Trump on weaker ground than he would like to think. At a press conference on Monday, while Trump, rightly, offered a firm condemnation of a killing in Portland, this was matched with a refusal to say the same about the killings which took place in Kenosha last week. Trump even suggested that the perpetrator – 17 year-old Trump supporter Kyle Rittenhouse – could have acted in self-defence. He didn’t seem to reflect upon whether a young man turning up to a riot zone in Wisconsin from his own state of Illinois, militia-style with an assault rifle, was a fundamentally bad idea. Law and order indeed – but for whom?

Already, some polls are suggesting that voters don’t trust Trump to rein in the violence. A poll by YouGov conducted on September 2 found that 56% of all US adults – and 54% of independent voters –  believe that protest will violence will worsen if Trump is re-elected.

Nor can we expect Trump to change tack here. Rittenhouse has become a disturbing folk hero to vocal elements of the US right with defences, and even celebrations of him, offered by key conservative media figures. Trump’s complete unwillingness to condemn anyone he perceives to be on his side, visible as far back as the violence in Charlottesville during the summer of 2017, means he is unlikely to disavow extremists who support him.

The irony here is that, for fear of alienating supporters, he is neglecting his best path to victory, which relies on winning back moderate Republicans in the suburbs who voted Democrat in the 2018 mid-terms. 

Biden has responded well enough to Trump’s law and order challenge. His message has been robust, even if he has occasionally stumbled over his words. In a speech on Monday, Biden firmly pushed back on any allegations about being weak on violence: “[R]ioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted.” He further played on the widespread sense Trump was making things worse, declaring that: “Fires are burning and we have a president who fans the flames rather than fighting the flames.”  

Under the circumstances, it is not inconceivable that Biden could even poach the law and order mantle from Trump. Reluctance by some liberals to criticise the violence or even outright defences of looting by some on the radical left, which some worry will help Trump in the November election, are clearly not shared by the man who is now the Democrats’ presidential candidate.