Thread by @DougKass

The 2020 @realdonaldtrump "No Apologies Tour" continues:
I’s official: The White House will announce that surrendering to the coronavirus is a strategy and that defeat is victory. NBC, “ 'We need to live with it': White House readies new message for the nation on coronavirus.”

The administration’s response has been such a monumental failure that the U.S. is a pariah among major powers, joining Russia on the EU’s “no visitors” list. China, the epicenter of the pandemic, is on the “approved” list of countries that have contained the virus.
Trump’s

failure in the face of the coronavirus has been abject and complete. He lacks the leadership, intellectual capacity, discipline, and empathy to lead us out of the pandemic. Faced with humiliating failure, he has adopted a perverse strategy: to convert his campaign into a series

of “super spreader” events in which he flouts his administration’s guidance for limiting the spread of the virus. See Business Insider, “Experts worry Trump's Mount Rushmore Independence Day celebration is a coronavirus superspreader event in the making.” Apart from generating

“made-for-TV” video clips of small but crowded rallies, he appears intent on infecting as many of his supporters as possible. I am still trying to understand Trump’s twisted logic in doing so. If any of you can figure it out, let me know.
Trump has also adopted surrender as the

strategy for his 2020 campaign. Having offended every constituency except his shrinking base, he has no plan except to continue to pander to a group of voters too small to reelect him. Usually, presidential candidates attempt to increase the number of people likely to vote for

him or her. Not Trump. He has picked sides in a culture war—hardly a winning strategy for expanding the number of voters likely to vote for him.
Trump’s speeches over the Fourth of July were dark and divisive. David Nakamura’s op-ed in the Washington Post provides a cogent

analysis of the central premise in Trump’s holiday speeches: set Americans against one another. See WaPo, “In Trump’s new version of “American carnage,” the threat isn’t immigrants or foreign nations. It’s other Americans.” Writes Nakamura:
As he has so often during his tenure,

the president made clear that he will do little to try to heal or unify the country ahead of the November presidential election but rather aims to drive a deeper wedge into the country’s fractures. For Trump, that has meant defining a new foil.
Trump’s “new foil” is “other”

Americans—ones who do not “look like” Trump supporters. As expressed by Business Insider, Trump is channeling “white grievance” to fuel his campaign. See Business Insider, “Defiant President Trump is convinced that venting white grievance is his path to reelection victory.”

(“President Donald Trump is shrugging off concerns within his party over his divisive rhetoric and is convinced that stoking the grievances of his white core voters will see him reelected in November.”)
All objective evidence suggests that Trump’s strategy of using white

grievance to fuel a culture war is a losing strategy—a fact Trump would understand if he listened to his advisers or did not dismiss unfavorable polls as “fake news.” The problem for Trump is that he is forced to condemn polls taken by his captive cable news organization—

Fox News. See Salon, “Trump scrambles to explain how he can still win in the face of devastating new Fox News poll.” The most recent poll from Fox shows that Biden is widening his lead over Trump, which prompted Trump to tweet on Sunday,
FoxNews gladly puts up the phony

suppression polls as soon as they come out," Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. "We are leading in the REAL polls because people are sick & tired of watching the Democrat run cities, in all cases, falling apart. Also, now 96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party. Another 2016!

In fact, GOP internal polling shows Trump losing as well. Salon, “Republicans' internal polls predict a "Democratic rout" this fall: Election analyst.” The Salon article explains that parties release internal polling when it is favorable to their candidate. Per Salon,

Democratic and liberal aligned groups have put out 17 House polls taken in April or later. Republican aligned groups have put out 0. That's a very bad ratio for Republicans.
As Einstein never said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different

results.” By that measure, Trump is insane. Unless, of course, he wants to lose, which many readers have suggested to me. While I don’t agree, it is a rational explanation for irrational behavior @jimcramer @tomkeene @business @ScottWapnerCNBC @riskreversal @epsilon @FerroTV

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