The Limits of Trump’s Silent Majority

When he is in trouble in the polls, Donald Trump tweets, assuring that the “silent majority” is behind him and asserting that “96%” of Republican voters support him. The problem for the president of the United States is that his “silent majority” has never been a majority. Even when he was elected in 2016, Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.

In addition, a Gallup poll reveals that the number of Americans affiliated with the Republican Party has rarely been so low, whereas the number of independents has increased compared to the 2016 presidential election. And these are clearly much closer to the Democratic Party (50%) than the Republican Party (38%).

Trump can no longer rely on crowds, either. In 2016, he was constantly boasting, rightly, about the throngs of people at his political rallies. But the pandemic has so ravaged the country that it has forced the president to put an end to these events after one last rally in June in Oklahoma turned into a fiasco.

Less than 100 days from the presidential election, the American president is struggling as a result of his disastrous management of the pandemic. And as he did during the congressional elections of 2018 when he attempted in vain to protect his Republican majority in the House of Representatives by raising the specter of an invasion of illegal immigrants, he is trying to spark fear again this year using the wave of protests in the United States. He promises the “destruction” of American cities if Joe Biden is elected. The deep scar on the face of Kristen Jessie-Uyanik, a mother of three children, injured during a protest by mothers in Portland that was crushed by force on Saturday, tells a very different story from the president’s.