Maggie Haberman: ‘Stoking Racial Tensions’ Is ‘Now a Strategy’ for Trump’s Reelection Campaign

EXCERPT:

HABERMAN: “It’s not as if stoking racial tension has never been done before and it’s never worked before. Politicians do it because it works. Very few people run for re-election as incumbent presidents with an economy like this without talking about it, which is what this president does. And the one thing I just would asterisk heavily here is yes it is now a strategy but this was not a strategy when he tweeted this out on Sunday, you know, about they should go back to where they came from. He tweeted something as some visceral reaction either to something he saw on television or something he was reading and they had then to reverse engineer this as some plot of genius. In reality, look, he ran a campaign of division and stoking tensions and inflaming tensions in 2016. He’s going to make that I think look like a quiet stroll through the park based on yesterday. It was very jarring to see a sitting U.S. president not quieting chants of 'send her back.' And again we’ve seen this repeatedly here and elsewhere you have to contrast it with what John McCain did when he was running for president in 2008 and somebody referred to then-Senator Barack Obama as an Arab. And John McCain interrupted and said no he’s just somebody who I have disagreements with. You’re going to see the president doing a lot of this and his advisers believe that people are more turned off but Congresswoman Omar and to a lesser extent the rest of the, quote, unquote, 'Squad.' But this is really about Ilhan Omar, the Congresswoman from Minnesota. And they believe there’s going to be enough discomfort about her with swing voters and some Democrats that this will be effective. It is way too early to know how this is going to play."

(via Mediaite)