Trump seizes on US troops killed and border crisis to sell general election message

Donald Trump’s core general election argument is that President Joe Biden is weak and incapable as events spin out of control at home and abroad.

And he’s presenting himself as the strongman that America needs to save it.

The former president spent Saturday night in Nevada lambasting his successor’s southern border policies, which he portrayed as a national security disaster waiting to happen. “There’s a 100% chance that there will be a major terrorist attack in the United States, so many attacks, maybe, and it’s all because of what’s happened over the last three years,” he said. And yet Trump is also trying to kill off a Senate compromise deal that might ease the situation on the border – a sign of his growing power in the GOP and of his tendency to exacerbate the kind of chaos he’s using as a rationale for his own election.

The ex-president was also quick to exploit another crisis for political gain on Sunday. After tragedy struck in the Middle East when three US troops were killed in a drone attack in Jordan, Trump put all the blame on Biden and his perceived lack of strength, claiming that current wars would never have happened if he were in the Oval Office. “(We) would right now have Peace throughout the World. Instead, we are on the brink of World War 3,” Trump said in a statement.

His attacks represent gross simplifications of complex problems and an inflated sense of his own foreign policy, which was chiefly characterized by cozying up to dictators and excoriating US allies, while turning the United States – a source of global stability for decades – into a force for disruption.

But Trump’s attacks do stress the real political peril Biden faces at home as he wrestles with the possibility that an expanding Middle Eastern war could drag the US back into a regional conflict.

Trump’s demagogic descriptions of a border under siege and a world that is laughing at US weakness come at a moment when many Americans are concerned about migrant flows at the southern border – and when bewildering world events and challenges to US power are multiplying. The atmosphere of disorder that Trump is trying to foster also coincides with a feeling among some voters that the country’s on the wrong track – especially as high grocery prices and interest rates challenge many family budgets.

So Trump’s picture of a world in disarray as Biden stands by helplessly may have some political potency.

It is also intended to play into concerns about Biden’s age and anxiety among many Americans that the 81-year-old would be unfit to lead the US in a second term.

Biden has tried to throw that back at Trump, raising questions about his temperament and mental acuity following the former president’s own recent string of campaign trail gaffes, some unhinged appearances outside courtrooms and a self-absorbed victory speech after the New Hampshire primary last week.