Trump Is Beating Trump

Biden wants to make the race a referendum. The president needs to make it a choice.

In theory, President Trump is in a pitched battle with Joe Biden for the presidency. In reality, Mr. Trump is in a battle with Mr. Trump.

That’s one way to look at the recent round of sliding Trump poll numbers, which the media and Democrats are prematurely hailing as an obituary for the administration, but which also have Republicans nervous. Mr. Trump’s path to re-election rests in painting a sharp contrast between his policies of economic restoration, a transformed judiciary and limited government with those of Mr. Biden’s promise of (at best) a return to the slow growth of the Obama years or (at worst) an embrace of progressive nirvana. Instead, he’s helping Democrats and the media make the race a referendum on his Twitter feed.

“Let Trump be Trump!” cry the president’s supporters. They argue it worked before. But this isn’t 2016. The U.S. is emerging from an unprecedented pandemic lockdown that left millions unemployed or bankrupt, children without education, the social order in shambles. The fury that followed George Floyd’s death has put Americans on the edge. They need calm leadership and a positive vision for the future.

Mr. Trump offers glimpses. His May 30 speech following the historic manned SpaceX launch—which addressed the Floyd killing—was a call for justice and peace as well as a tribute to American aspiration. In a subsequent Rose Garden speech, he deplored Floyd’s “brutal death” and reminded viewers that “America needs creation, not destruction.” A week later, his Rose Garden remarks celebrated a jobs report that defied gloomy predictions, and it showcased the American desire to get back to work.

But these highlights were quickly eclipsed by the many openings Mr. Trump provided the media and Democrats to focus not on American revival, but on Mr. Trump.
  • His complaints about Defense Secretary Mark Esper; his
  • bitterness toward former Secretary Jim Mattis. The
  • walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he flashed the Bible; the
  • arguments over why he visited the White House bunker.
  • His tweeted suggestion that the 75-year-old protester in Buffalo pushed to the ground by police might have been a “set up.”

What happened in Minneapolis—a city run by Democrats in a state run by Democrats—was no fault of the White House. But the president’s need to be at the center of everything has allowed a hostile press to present him as the source of racial tension.

The Trump campaign makes a compelling case that it is nonsensical to claim Democrats are running away with the race. Democratic pollster Doug Schoen wrote that the recent CNN survey showing Mr. Biden up 14 points nationally was skewed—it underrepresented Republicans and counted registered voters rather than likely ones. Match-ups still look tight in swing states.

Mr. Biden is also grappling with an enthusiasm problem. Mr. Trump this year has set records in primary after primary in voter turnout—even though he is uncontested. A recent ABC poll showed only 34% of Biden supporters were “very enthusiastic” about their nominee, compared with 69% of those backing Mr. Trump. Officials also note that the race—at least the mano-a-mano part of it—has yet to begin.

But there’s no question Mr. Trump’s numbers have eroded, both overall and among key voter subgroups. The latest Gallup poll finds only 47% approval of his handling of the economy, down from 63% in January. Those numbers are bleeding into congressional races, putting Republican control of the Senate at risk and raising the possibility of a rout in the House. If the Trump campaign can’t turn things around, the country could be looking at total Democratic control for the first time since 2010—and a liberal Senate majority that may well eliminate the filibuster for legislation and pack the courts. The stakes are high.

The prospect of a turnaround rests on Mr. Trump’s ability to do more than taunt his competitor as “Sleepy Joe” and rail against the “RADICAL LEFT!!” With an economy in tatters, Mr. Trump has an opening to redefine the election as a choice. Americans can vote again for the policies that revived the economy after the moribund Obama-Biden years and continue transforming the judiciary. Or they can take a chance on a Democrat who has promised to raise taxes on 90% of Americans, kill blue-collar fossil-fuel jobs and ban guns, and a party that is considering demands to “defund the police.”

Democrats want this election to be a simple question of whether Americans want four more years of a chaotic White House. The country has had its fill of chaos, so that could prove a powerful message for Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump has to decide just how much he wants to help him.

Texas law protecting armed churchgoers debated after congregant kills gunman at Sunday service

Top Texas officials on Monday cited the actions of several armed churchgoers who subdued a gunman in their sanctuary this weekend as a model of how Americans should protect themselves from potential mass shooters.

The attack, after which two church members and the gunman were dead, came two years after the Texas legislature passed a law that authorized anyone with a concealed-carry license to bring their weapon into houses of worship. That law was a response to the 2017 attack on a church in Sutherland Springs that left 26 people dead before a local resident shot the gunman outside the church, forcing him to flee.

The shooter who attacked West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement on Sunday was killed by a single shot from church member Jack Wilson, a former reserve sheriff’s deputy and Army veteran. Wilson, who owns a shooting range in nearby Granbury, said he started training fellow members to be a part of the church’s volunteer security team when it launched after the Texas law passed.

“If there is any church in this state, in America, that was prepared for this, it was this church,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said at a news conference Monday. “They had done their training. And I think that you could see it in the results.”

He credited the new law with making the armed congregants’ quick responses possible, calling it a “model of what other churches and other places of business need to focus on” and saying that they saved the lives of manyin the crowd of more than 200 people.

President Trump weighed in Monday evening, tweeting that the attack “was over in 6 seconds thanks to the brave parishioners who acted to protect 242 fellow worshippers. Lives were saved by these heroes, and Texas laws allowing them to carry arms!”

But other state leaders took issue with Trump and Paxton’s interpretation of the incident. Former Texas congressman and onetime presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said the shooting was a reflection of the state’s lax gun-control measures.

“Our representatives in Texas have left us open to these kinds of attacks,” he tweeted. “Time to change our representatives.”

Gun-control activists called out the rate of firearm-related homicides and suicides in the Texas, which ranks in the middle of the pack nationally for gun deaths, according to federal data.

“If more guns and fewer gun laws made Texas safer, it would be the safest state in the US,” tweeted Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action. “Instead, it has high rates of gun suicide and homicide, and is home to 4 of the 10 deadliest mass shootings.”

The shooter, whom authorities identified as 43-year-old Keith Thomas Kinnunen, fatally shot two members of the church’s volunteer security team, both men in their 60s, during the Sunday service before Wilson fired back at him, officials said.

A video of the attack, captured by the church’s live-stream camera, shows the gunman sitting in a pew during the service before the shooting. He stands up and paces briefly before he speaks to another churchgoer and pulls a large gun from his coat. He then fires toward the man he spoke to, striking him and another man standing nearby, as other congregants scream and dive beneath the pews.

The video then shows a fourth man, apparently Wilson, shoot the gunman. At least four congregants with weapons raised rush toward the attacker, who had fallen to the ground.

The two victims were taken to a hospital but soon died of their injuries. The Texas Department of Public Safety identified the men as Anton Wallace, 64, of Fort Worth and Richard White, 67, of River Oaks.

The footage has since been removed from church YouTube page, though it continues to circulate through social media platforms.

The FBI is working with local and state authorities to investigate the shooting. Paxton said investigators are uncertain of the gunman’s motive and are still searching for people who knew the shooter. Kinnunen, who had previous convictions for assault, theft and possession of an illegal weapon, appeared to be “more of a loner.”

It is “probably going to be very difficult to determine what his motivations were, other than maybe mental illness,” Paxton said.

Authorities said Kinnunen may have been transient and appeared to have visited the church several times.

“Unfortunately, this country has seen so many of these that we’ve actually gotten used to it at this point,” Jeoff Williams, the regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told reporters Monday. “It’s tragic, and it’s a terrible situation, especially during the holiday season.”

A spokesperson for the West Freeway Church of Christ and senior minister Britt Farmer’s family declined Monday to address the shooting or the church’s security practices. It is unclear whether the church screens people who carry guns into the building.

The spokesman said church leaders would release a statement Monday night, after a prayer vigil for the victims.

Farmer recently self-published a work of fiction, set in Texas Hill Country, about an attack on the United States by Muslim terrorists — an event, he writes in the book’s introduction, that he hopes “never comes to pass, but, there is always that possibility.”

As the story begins, a group of Texas ranchers worry forebodingly about the presence of terrorists in the United States. Later, as an Islamic State flag is hoisted atop the Empire State Building, they are glad to have stockpiled guns and ammunition.

“ ‘Guns needed now,” the main character thinks as the crisis gets underway.

Before the new law, gun owners in Texas could not carry weapons into a house of worship without specific authorization from church leadership. The Sutherland Springs attack spurred Texas lawmakers in a Republican-controlled legislature to loosen the state’s gun laws so that they could do so more easily.

While there is no specific law that allows armed volunteers in places of worship, members of a congregation can use their concealed-carry license to protect their religious community, said South Texas College of Law Houston professor Josh Blackman.

Houses of worship and other businesses in Texas are still legally authorized to ban firearms on their premises. But in September, another law went into effect requiring a house of worship to post a sign stating it is opting out before it can prohibit licensed individuals from carrying weapons inside.