"...But Trump’s own version of the southern strategy is an updated one for 2020. It’s not a carbon copy, and the president has mixed this angle with other pitches to voters. Yet as tensions over police and protests have increased across America, Trump has increasingly made these arguments the centerpiece of his campaign in the closing months of the election.
“'He’s throwing gasoline on a fire. He knows what he’s doing. He’s making a political calculus that by stoking the worst parts of the American psyche that he can somehow gain political leverage from that,' said Isaac Wright, a Democratic strategist who specializes in rural campaigns and southern voters.
"Wright pointed to when neo-Nazis marched through Charlottesville and the president defensively said there were 'very fine people' both among the marchers and the counter-marchers.
“'I think this is what he did in 2016 – he’s just becoming more blatant and open of who he is and what he’s doing,' Wright said. ..."