How Trump uses federal agencies as a reelection campaign tool
Members of the "Wall of Moms" march Thursday in Portland, Ore., in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and against the deployment of federal agents in tactical gear. Credit: AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez
U.S. government agencies are now serving as assets in President Donald Trump's reelection effort. The use of public resources and platforms to stage events with the potential to sway voters in the fall has become far from subtle.
Examples abound. Federal law enforcement is drafted into shadowy assignments shaped around the president’s critique of Democratic-run cities. Attorney General William Barr seeks at every turn to nullify the stench of the 2016 Russia scandals. The State Department is taking aim at China in ways designed to eclipse Trump's months of embarrassing public support for Beijing's handling of the coronavirus.
Trade adviser Peter Navarro works to beat down the credibility of Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose rather bland, fact-based warnings about COVID-19 clashed with Trump's fervent efforts to put a positive spin on pandemic news.
The Education Department pushes for school reopening in ways that happen to make private institutions look better as alternatives, a long-running GOP plank. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention altered its school-opening messages last week in a way that aligns with Trump's campaign.
Trump regularly accuses others of doing exactly what he's trying to do. In one such clumsy projection he tweeted without evidence earlier this month: “Corrupt Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t want to open schools in the Fall for political reasons, not for health reasons!"
For its part, the Pentagon announced a policy that bans displays of the Confederate flags on U.S. military installations — but devised a delicately worded memo intended to not contrast too sharply with Trump's symbolic appeals to right-wing whites.
Administration officials even floated the idea of redirecting some of the federal funds now withheld from the World Health Organization to Samaritan's Purse, a nonprofit charity controlled by the Rev. Franklin Graham, a Trump supporter.
Graham quickly said he would not seek taxpayer funding. Maybe it was a political nicety for the White House to suggest the idea.
Politicians commonly craft policy initiatives that can help them look good in an election season. This is especially true of grants and tax breaks for constituents. Perhaps what's distinctive about Trump, however, is his particularly nasty and dramatic use of his public job to smear those he sees as enemies.
The president overtly tried last year to use U.S. arms to leverage the Ukrainian government into announcing an investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son. More recently, when asked in the Oval Office about sending federal officers into cities, Trump skipped over matters of governance. Instead he said: "If Joe Biden gets elected, the whole country would go to hell. And we’re not going to let it go to hell.”
Dire White House warnings, blended with expedient police actions, are far from new.
George W. Bush was the last Republican president to run for reelection. Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, while hosting the 2004 Republican National Convention, had the NYPD sweep protesters of the Iraq occupation, along with mere bystanders, off the streets.
Many were held for long periods awaiting arraignment. Numerous false-arrest lawsuits were later settled for millions of dollars. Street scenes at the time included tear gas and scooters driven into groups of demonstrators.
Vice President Dick Cheney warned 16 years ago that the nation would risk a terror attack if it made "the wrong choice," meaning then-Democratic challenger John Kerry.
This sounds in retrospect like one of Trump's threats — making it extra ironic that Bloomberg and the Bush crowd are so alienated from the current GOP president, who belittles them at every turn.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
