Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign reportedly tested the use of a number of “outlandish” ideas, including a potential policy to allow Americans to sue China in court and expel Chinese scientists, a new book claims.
According This Will Not Happen: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, written by two New York Times Journalists, Trump’s top advisers gauged the public’s reaction to the expulsion of Chinese scientists from the US, reported the Well-informed person.
It also tested sending the National Guard to US cities in times of social unrest.
“John would send me these emails that would go on for pages with these crazy bullshit questions. He would say, ‘Where do you get these questions from?’” Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio told the book’s authors, Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns. The report does not clarify who Fabrizio was referring to as “John.”
The specific wording of the question about the removal of Chinese scientists was stated in the book as whether one “would be for or against requiring that all Chinese scientists, researchers, and technicians who are Chinese citizens leave the US.” .
The survey was conducted during Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign and as the covid pandemic had begun to spread across the US and other countries, leading to hate crimes and baseless accusations against Chinese and foreign citizens. Asian origin.
The 2020 poll test was similar to Trump’s 2015 campaign proposal banning Muslims from entering the US.
The decision to go ahead with the policy had sparked condemnation and protests across the country. The Trump White House reviewed the policy multiple times before the Supreme Court upheld it in a 5-4 decision.
The questions came from a “fluid” group of official and unofficial Trump advisers, according to the book’s authors, who described the poll questions as “wacky” and “provocative.”
The cohort of attendees included former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Clinton ally Dick Morris and White House adviser Stephen Miller.
Mr Gingrich said Well-informed person that reporting on the questions “doesn’t sound good” and declined to go into detail about those he was involved with.
“In April polls, most likely voters in swing states opposed cracking down on Chinese students and researchers. But, through the spring and summer, the wild proposals only continued to come from Trump’s fluid circle of formal and informal advisers,” the authors wrote.