One month ago, Trump exclaimed in his debate with Harris:
In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country.
JD Vance, who made the same false claim earlier that day and who knew the story was a lie from the beginning, justified telling the tale again and again: "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm gonna do, Dana."
In Aurora, Colorado last week Trump's fabrications and rhetoric grew more frenzied, this time about Venezuelan gangs taking over the city. The Republican mayor dismissed Trump's slander just as the Republican mayor of Springfield, Ohio had repudiated the lies Trump spread about his city. But, as I suggested recently, in escalating racist rhetoric and lies, Trump is hitting his stride. Peddling fear, Trump persists in vilifying immigrants:
At the rally, Mr. Trump continued to use dehumanizing rhetoric, referring to violent immigrants as “animals,” “barbaric thugs” and “sadistic monsters.” At one point, he falsely claimed that Ms. Harris had “infested” buildings in Aurora with gang members.
In December in New Hampshire, Trump declared:
“They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done,” he said in New Hampshire. “They poison — mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America. Not just the three or four countries that we think about. But all over the world they’re coming into our country — from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
Racial animosity in American politics
The campaigns of Southern Democrats during the Jim Crow era were transparently racist; the language openly employed was vile and degrading. Republicans, as the party of Lincoln, stood apart from those Democrats who demanded all-white rule. After passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act during the Johnson Administration, the parties began to switch sides. When Nixon launched his Southern Strategy, the message had become (mostly) coded in whispers and dog whistles (as Lee Atwater, a master of racist campaigns, explained). The language was veiled. Plausible deniability required a respectable veneer (most of the time).
By 2024, after Trump's MAGA takeover of the Republican Party, the message is no longer a whisper or a whistle. Although Trump sneers at majority-Black cities and denigrates Black public officials, he has directed his wrath primarily at immigrants, most especially those from "shit-hole countries" (in contrast to, for instance, Norway).
After gliding down the golden escalator, Trump telegraphed the louder, harsher change in rhetoric with his 2015 campaign launch. Now, an even less restrained Trump is shouting the message -- with a torrent of lies -- before raucous crowds. Moreover, he has often veered into darker territory, articulating his campaign pitch with straight-up fascist language, echoing Nazi Germany.
The 1950s and '60s were too near to World War II to make the white supremacist parlance of the Third Reich acceptable. Three-quarters of a century later, the same Donald Trump who scorns NATO is borrowing Hitler's rhetoric. A diminishing handful of Americans experienced WWII; even the Cold War, started after the armistice, is a mere memory. The election of the nation's first Black president in 2008, and a more highly diverse America, initiated with passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (LBJ again), have brought us into a new era.
Native-born Americans: the enemy from within
Over time, Trump has widened the scope of his attacks, from undocumented immigrants, to legal immigrants, and more recently to his political opponents: native-born Americans who comprise "the enemy from within."
“We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries, because if you have a smart president, he can handle them pretty easily,” Trump said. He insisted that he had done so when in office previously.
“But the thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff,” he said of the California congressman and Senate candidate. He called Schiff “a total sleazebag” and then, explicitly, “the enemy from within.”
...
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroyed our country, by the way, totally destroying our country. The towns, the villages, they’re being inundated. But I don’t think they’re the problem in terms of Election Day,” Trump said. “I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical-left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
Pledges of violence
Hateful rhetoric and lies -- directed at Black Americans and immigrants from nonwhite countries -- have been followed with explicit threats of violent repression of his political enemies writ large, even Americans whose families immigrated generations ago (as the vast majority in this country of immigrants have done).
There has been speculation recently about whether Trump is becoming less coherent because of his increasing age. He would be the oldest president ever elected in our history. One age-related analysis noted his appeal to violence: the suggestion that police to exact punishment on shoplifters on "one really violent day."
But put age aside, Trump may have simply become angrier, or convinced that this is the most strategic path to victory in the final weeks of the campaign, or perhaps SCOTUS's immunization decision has freed him to lash out less cautiously. Whatever the cause, the violent rhetoric and threats to employ the military to go after his perceived enemies is a flashing red light to anyone concerned about the eroding guardrails of American democracy. How far we've come since 2015.
Unmistakable authoritarianism
Trump has become more openly authoritarian. The vitriol, vilification, and lies have become more incendiary. The breadth of his ire, with an expanding list of enemies, has increased. The invocations of violence come much more frequently. We have witnessed this in plain sight. It couldn't be clearer, which makes General Mark Milley's assessment that Trump is "fascist to the core" much more difficult to dismiss as overstatement.
Trump has wagered that an over-the-top authoritarian campaign will return him to the White House. I have often articulated my faith that American voters will reject this man this time around. But I must acknowledge, the odds look even at this stage, barely three weeks from election day.