The Politics of Terrorism: Don’t Just Assume Acts of Violence Will Help Donald Trump in the Polls
Terror is not so terrifying if you’re not listening to Trump and Cable news networks.
On Saturday night, a homemade bomb exploded in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, causing non-serious injuries to a couple dozen people. A similar bomb exploded in New Jersey earlier in the day, causing no injuries. Another New Jersey bomb was detonated by law enforcement robots. Within a couple of days, law enforcement officials had tracked down and apprehended the person thought to be responsible for planting the explosive devices: Ahmad Khan Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen.
With all this happening in such close proximity to the presidential election, the obvious question that arises is what political impact it will have. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza argues that the “chaos” we’re allegedly seeing in the aftermath of the bombs and a knife attack in Minnesota gives the advantage to Donald Trump:
When Jeb Bush famously described Trump as the “chaos candidate” in late 2015, the former Florida governor meant it as a pejorative. But the truth is that chaos, uncertainty and anxiety will work in Trump’s favor over the final 50 days of the presidential camipaign [sic].
A broad swath of polling showed that Americans hated Trump’s response and disagreed with his proposals to address terrorism.It’s worth pointing out first that the “chaos” Cillizza describes seems to be a creation of cable news; nobody was seriously injured by the bombs, the authorities clamped down on the suspect with incredible speed, and New Yorkers are apparently taking the whole thing in stride.
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