Trump campaign gets its cue: Go all-in on ‘law and order’

Initially, the campaign focused on criticizing the media for not focusing on Trump's calls for justice. Now, it's switched to promoting Trump's calls for "law and order."

Within minutes of President Donald Trump’s address to the nation Monday, his campaign aides began to mobilize.

They cut a video of his speech. They promoted a black-and-white photo of him striding out of the White House to a partially burned church. One tweeted: “Triumph. Leadership. Law and Order.”

Days after massive protests broke out over George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, the campaign had finally received its directive. Staffers are now embracing and promoting Trump’s threats to send the military into cities to help quell looting and vandalism in the hopes it will help the president win over seniors and suburban women, even if it comes at the expense of black voters.

It was an uncharacteristically sluggish start for a campaign that is used to swiftly pushing out talking points, quickly creating items to sell on its online store and almost instantly buying Facebook ads as Trump careens from crisis to crisis: the Russia probe, impeachment, the brink of a military confrontation with Iran — the list goes on and on.

In this instance, the campaign was less aggressive than usual because Trump and his White House aides spent several days trying to determine which direction to take as thousands took to the streets to protest police brutality and entrenched racism after the death of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man killed at the hands of Minnesota police while repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe.”

“The problem is until you know what he's going to do, what do you say?” said a former White House official who worked on Trump’s first campaign.