It is hardly news that President Trump has deliberately provoked liberal outrage, as a candidate and as president. But in case anyone is still wondering whether his inflammatory language is the result of design or impulse, recent comments from current and former White House strategists are revealing.
Last month, an unabashed Stephen Miller, Trump’s ever-calculating White House aide, described this tactic to the Atlantic as “constructive controversy — with the purpose of enlightenment.”
“Our thing is to throw gasoline on the resistance,” Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to Trump, told Vanity Fair last December. “I love it. When they talk about identity politics, they’re playing into our hands.”
Trump and his allies are capitalizing on a decades-long fight over immigration policy that they believe will galvanize more voters on the right than on the left, generating sufficient enthusiasm among Trump’s supporters to counter an energized Democratic electorate. The unpleasant reality is that a number of recent analyses based on psychological, sociological and political research provide a logical basis for the incendiary Trump-Miller-Bannon strategy. CONT.
Thomas Edsall, New York Times