“… Mr. Trump has long made clear that coming together is not the mission of his presidency. In an era of deep polarization in American society, he rarely talks about healing. While other presidents have typically tried to lower the temperature in moments of national crisis, Mr. Trump turns up the flames. He does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all the people. He acts as
president of red America and the people who agree with him, while those who do not are portrayed as enemies and traitors deserving payback.
“The left has declared war on America,” Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist and a leading voice in the MAGA movement, said in a text message on Saturday. “Trump is a wartime president now focused on eradicating domestic terrorists like ANTIFA,” Mr. Bannon added, referring to the antifascist movement.
… Plenty of left-wing voices online have fueled the divisions. Within hours of Mr. Kirk’s death, Americans of all stripes began pointing fingers at each other, even before a suspect had been caught or any motivation had been firmly determined.
… [Ari] Fleischer, who supports Mr. Trump, said the current president has been the target of so much hatred that no one would credit him for a calm response, were he to offer one. “The vitriol against President Trump from the left is so deep that there is not a syllable, word, sentence or paragraph Donald Trump could say that would mollify them,” he said. “Trump’s mantra is ‘fight, fight, fight,’ so no one should be surprised by his reaction.”
… It was Mr. Bannon, after all, who said after Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory that unity was not the goal. “We didn’t win an election to bring the country together,” he said then.
… Mr. Trump also posted a video last week assailing Democratic mayors on crime, even as crime rates have fallen sharply in recent years. “For far too long, Americans have been forced to put up with Democrat-run cities that set loose savage, bloodthirsty criminals to prey on innocent people,” he said in
the video.
… Mr. Trump is certainly right that his opponents have called him a “fascist” and “Nazi.” But his outrage at incendiary rhetoric is situational. In the same Fox News interview last week in which he complained about excesses by the left, he referred to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and front-runner for mayor of New York, as a “communist.” Even more than in his first term, Mr. Trump lately has
referred to political rivals and journalists as “evil.” …”