Julian Zelizer on Trump's increasingly dire rhetoric
“He doesn’t even really use code words or anything. He’s just all in.”
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In the closing days of the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump is talking a lot about “the enemy within.” He’s threatened to deploy the US military against his domestic political foes. His rallies are orgies of hate where the likes of Stephen Miller point at mugshots of Latino men while Trump fans boo and jeer.
Trump regularly claims these days that America is “an occupied country” awaiting his “liberation” from migrant criminals who are “the most violent people on earth." He’s said that if harris wins, “a never-ending stream of illegal alien rapists, MS-13 animals, and child predators will flood into your communities." His pitch to women is that he’ll protect them from “migrant killers running around their backyard."
It’s ugly, racist stuff meant to scare the bejesus out of people, and even outlets like Politico that aren’t normally sounding alarms about Trump have noticed it’s getting worse. Politico’s Myah Ward’s watched a string of Trump’s recent rallies and drew the following conclusions (emphasis ours):
His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.
To get a sense of how unusual it is for a presidential candidate to close on a message of American Carnage turned up to 11, we connected with Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University who has written several books about presidents and elections.
“From a mainstream candidate, I don’t think we’ve seen this kind of tapping into the most vicious, nativist, racial backlash,” Zelizer told Public Notice contributor Thor Benson. “He doesn’t even really use code words or anything. He’s just all in.”
Zelizer connected Trump’s escalating rhetoric to the fact he’s has gotten away with so much over the years.
“If you can be part of an insurrection against an election you lose and still end up as the very well-positioned nominee for your party a few years later, why edit yourself? He’s not someone who’s guided by any kind of internal moral ethic,” he said.
A full transcript of Zelizer’s conversation with Benson, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Thor Benson