After the DNC kicked off Monday night with speakers Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders calling for a unified and empathetic America, names have begun to emerge of some of the featured speakers at next week’s Republican National Convention: former Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann; gun-toting Missouri couple Patricia and Mark McCloskey; and anti-abortion advocate Abby Johnson. The lineup makes clear that no stone will be left unturned on the road to election night; along with destabilizing the postal service and touting an experimental extract to fight COVID-19, Donald Trump is dialing up his culture-war campaign strategy.
Sandmann, for those unfamiliar, was filmed in 2019 at Lincoln Memorial plaza wearing a MAGA hat and allegedly mocking activist Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder who had been part of an Indigenous Peoples March held at the plaza. A photograph of a smiling Sandmann standing face to face with Phillips went viral, with Sandmann seeming to advocate the president’s viewpoint—Trump has frequently disparaged Native Americans, non-white immigrants and Black Lives Matter groups—and Phillips appearing to stand against it. Multiple outlets reported the standoff as such, and Sandmann sued the Washington Post and CNN, among others, after additional reporting revealed the confrontation had been sparked by a third group. Both the Post and CNN ultimately settled with Sandmann, who tweeted on the occasion of one settlement, “I still have more to do.”
The McCloskeys are infamous for a video in which they point guns at protestors marching through their gated community in St. Louis, following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The couple claimed they feared for their lives, and their actions were widely condemned, with many pointing out the irony of their choice to aim weapons at unarmed and majority Black protesters marching to highlight the disproportionate impact of gun violence on Black communities. In July, they were charged with unlawful use of a weapon.
As their imminent coronation at the RNC makes clear, Republicans have chosen to distill both the Sandmann and McCloksey incidents into cases of stifled self-expression, an inalienable right that supposedly risks being revoked by the left. No matter that Native Americans have fought for autonomy and land rights for decades, and Black citizens have been surveilled, detained, and killed during police interactions far more often than their white counterparts—according to the Trump doctrine, the true victims are good, white, working-class Americans who may have their freedoms stifled.
It’s evident that Trump is hoping to tap into the same festering victimhood he mined in 2016—a tactic that rings especially hollow after a night of messaging from Democrats, which featured people like George Floyd’s brother holding a moment of silence and Sanders laying out reams of policy proposals. Moreover, it may be less effective this time around; the president has even less of a platform now than he did four years ago, precious little to show for his time in office, and as he reminded Michelle Obama so dutifully on Tuesday, 170,000—not 150,000—dead Americans on his hands. With almost nothing substantive to offer, his knee-jerk response to cultural flashpoints has gotten correspondingly stronger. The president “said it is absolutely absurd, what is happening to the McCloskeys,” press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters when the couple was charged.
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— How Jared Kushner’s Secret Coronavirus Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”
— Why Trump’s Black Lives Matter Protest Response Could Cost Him 2020
— Behind the Scenes of the NBA’s Dystopian COVID-Free Bubble
— Experts Worry Trump’s DHS Crackdowns Ignore the Real Threat
— How Carlos Ghosn Escaped Japan, According to the Ex-Soldier Who Snuck Him Out
— Former Pandemic Officials Call Trump’s Coronavirus Response a National Disaster
— From the Archive: The Untold Story of Dallas’s Heroic Ebola Response
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.