Daily Beast: “President Donald Trump has repeatedly struggled to outline what his second-term policy agenda might look like. But last week he finally offered one specific policy he hopes to put in place if he’s re-elected: a cut to the capital gains tax rate. It was the only specific second-term policy goal the president mentioned during an interview with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo. And though cutting tax rates on wealthy investors is a longtime mainstay of Republican tax policy, for even some of Trump’s own defenders the proposal was yet another illustration of a key shortcoming of his re-election bid.”
The billionaire who branded himself so effectively as a populist in 2016 has largely abandoned that approach. ‘So much of what made Trump 2016 so populist—immigration, for instance—is absent from 2020 messaging now because of the virus,’ said a Republican close to the Trump campaign. ‘It is different because the priorities are so radically different this time around, with the current crisis.'”