DEMS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “President Trump invoked on Tuesday [8-21-18] fears of immigrant crime and angry mobs as he began a weekslong push to try to preserve the Republican majority in Congress as the party braces for midterm losses amid a cascade of scandals involving members of his inner circle…In a wide-ranging, more than hourlong speech that touched on the potency of his political endorsements, his love of coal and promises to build a border wall — with a paean to his mother’s turkey recipe thrown in — Mr. Trump worked the crowd into a frenzy, repeatedly demonizing Democrats as coddlers of lawbreakers who would take the country down a dangerous path…On a day that his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted of financial fraud and Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations that he said were directed by Mr. Trump himself, the president mostly steered clear of those subjects. But the rally offered a vivid tableau of an extraordinary period in Mr. Trump’s already tumultuous tenure. The president is growing more defiant by the day even as the scandals appear to pose an increasingly serious threat to him, embarking on a cross-country tour in an urgent push to bolster his party’s chances of keeping control of Congress.”
–Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Katie Rogers, “Trump Attacks Democrats at Rally, but Mostly Steers Clear of Scandals Image,” The New York Times online, August 21, 2018