https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/21/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-washington/index.html
At the apex of political power, a
President who ought to be unifying the country seems to be using his
office to indulge his own need for attention and is exclusively talking
to the sizable minority that supports him no matter what.
Amid
crushing economic pain caused by shutdowns, a divided Congress cannot
decide whether it wants to do more to help, compounding the impression
that the fractured national political system and those in it are not
equal to the moment.
Every four
years, the instrument of political renewal, the presidential election,
offers a pressure valve for partisan angst and, for all the nation's
acrimonious political divides, legitimacy to the winner.
Trump is making clear that he plans to
use every instrument of the federal government to ensure he wins a
second term. This ranges from the seemingly trivial -- the use of the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop
to a boosterish Fox News town hall -- to the more sinister, the
declassification of intelligence to fuel conservative conspiracy
theories.
On Wednesday, Trump threatened to withhold coronavirus aid from Michigan and Nevada -- states trying to protect their residents by offering them the option of voting by mail in November.
Trump,
who previously falsely claimed that millions of fraudulent votes cost
him a popular-vote win in 2016, warned of "thousands and thousands" of
fake ballots.
With polls finding Biden in the lead, Trump has shown he plans to build another campaign on false claims about Obama
-- this time alleging criminality in the investigation mounted into his
own 2016 campaign's many and unusual contacts with Russia.
It's
an extraordinary spectacle: a President running for a second term and
focusing not on his own record but pinning hopes on falsifying the
conduct of his predecessor.
"He thinks he's a builder, but he's a destroyer of everything he touches," Biden said of his opponent.
