'He just doesn't get it' has Trump been left behind by America's

Longtime observers of Donald Trump have often compared him to an old man sitting at the end of a bar, holding forth with crazed opinions, overwhelming self-assurance and taboo-busting shock value guaranteed to draw a crowd. Now, perhaps for the first time, it seems the US president may have lost the room. Trump’s sixth sense for striking populist notes appears to have deserted him in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an African American man killed when a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes, sparking Black Lives Matter protests nationwide. Over the last three weeks the president has found himself on the wrong side of public opinion – and history – on everything from police reform to symbols of the Confederacy which fought a civil war to preserve slavery 150 years ago. Even a sport synonymous with his base, Nascar (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing), is on a different wavelength having banned the Confederate flag from its events. Some presidents capture a moment and give voice to a movement. At this time of national reckoning, however, Trump seems to have hit the wrong notes, out of tune with much (if not all) of the rest of the nation.“Whether it is suggesting shooting protesters or siccing dogs on them, pre-emptively defending the Confederate names of military installations or arguing that his supporters ‘love the Black people’, Mr Trump increasingly sounds like a cultural relic, detached from not just the left-leaning protesters in the streets but also the country’s political middle and even some Republican allies and his own military leaders,” the New York Times wrote on Thursday. I’ve never seen opinion shift this fast or deeply. Frank Luntz, Republican consultantThe uprising over Floyd’s killing, and over four centuries of slavery, segregation and injustice, demanded a space and time to heal, not a time to fight. But Trump’s entire political identity is constructed around conflict. At the height of the demonstrations, he staged a bizarre photo op outside a church after law enforcement used tear gas to clear peaceful protesters outside the White House. In an unprecedented announcement this week, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, apologised for taking part. Meanwhile Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow said: “I don’t believe there is systemic racism in the US.” Asked if the president believes there is a problem with institutional racism, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany replied: “I think this is the fourth time I’ve been asked it, and I’ve said each and every time: there are injustices that we have seen... and I would say this president has done a whole lot more than Democrats have ever done when it comes to rectifying injustices.”Yet the public mood is now one of acknowledgement that racism is systemic and not merely a case of some “bad apples”. The crowds protesting across 750 US cities over more than two weeks have been strikingly multiracial. After