
Insults and rancour: Dems risk treading on Trump’s home field
NEW YORK — Political rancour over immigration boiled over into increasingly personal insults Monday, as President Donald Trump took a harsh shot at a prominent congresswoman’s intellect and Democrats worried that some of their own anti-Trump rhetoric might play into his hands and backfire in November.
With language reaching belligerent levels seldom heard since the 2016 campaign, Republican tactics seemed aimed at least in part at activating loyal supporters for the midterm elections.
The issue of what passes for political civility in 2018 has been eagerly stoked by Trump, who has embraced the cultural battles playing out everywhere from restaurant tables to football fields to late-night comedy. And the ejection of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family from a Virginia restaurant over the weekend symbolizes the public anger that has tied Democrats in knots, leaving them torn as to how to respond to a president who defies the norms of his office.
Trump punched back sharply Monday after Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California told a crowd in her state over the weekend that “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them!”