Consider This from NPR - Trump's Rhetoric, Always Extreme, Is Getting More So

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Former President Donald Trump has always embraced dehumanizing rhetoric, but now as he tries to capture the presidency again, he's making even more extreme statements.It's a strategy that gets him lots of attention and that fuels his base.NPR's Juana Summers talks to White House correspondent Franco Ordonez and domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef about Trump's use of increasingly autocratic statements and social media posts.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Aisha Harris from Pop Culture Happy Hour. If you love NPR podcasts, you'll want the new NPR Plus podcast bundle. Enjoy an all-you-can-eat selection of NPR Plus podcasts with sponsor-free listening and bonus episodes. Plus, you'll be supporting public radio. Check it out at plus.npr.org. Nothing about former President Donald Trump's language or actions has ever been particularly subtle. But in recent weeks, his rhetoric has taken a darker turn. We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country. That's the former president in a Veterans Day

speech talking about his political enemies. He went on to say, The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. That speech drew immediate comparisons by scholars and the Biden campaign to rhetoric used by fascist dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. When asked about his autocratic tone, Trump said that for one day, the first day of his term, he would act as a dictator to see through his crackdown on illegal immigration. He has claimed he would do the following, send potentially hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops to close the southern border, build a new network of large immigrant detention camps, and finally, we will begin, and we have no choice, the largest deportation operation in American history.

Trump later dismissed his dictator comment as a joke. But this past weekend, he ratcheted up his anti-immigrant language at a campaign event in New Hampshire. They're poisoning the blood of our country. That's what they've done. They've poisoned 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. Blood poisoning spurred more comparisons to Hitler and white supremacists. At the same rally, he offered what has now become routine praise to strongmen like North Korea's Kim Jong-un and Hungary's Viktor Orban. And Trump used the words of yet another authoritarian leader on stage.

Vladimir Putin. Has anybody ever heard of Vladimir Putin? Of Russia says that Biden's, and this is a quote, politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy. So, you know, we talk about Consider this. Former President Trump has always embraced dehumanizing rhetoric. But now, as he makes another run for the White House, his statements have gotten more extreme, and it's getting him results. From NPR, I'm Juana Summers. It's Tuesday, December 19th.

It's Consider This from NPR. As Donald Trump tries to capture the presidency again, he is making jaw-dropping statements about how he would govern and who he would target. It's a doubling down on a strategy he used during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. Trump's extreme and increasingly autocratic statements and social media posts fuel his base. NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonez and NPR domestic extremism correspondent Odette Youssef have both been following the twists and turns of the campaign, and they join me now to unpack what Trump has been saying and why. Hello to both of you. Hey, Juana.

Franco, I want to start with you. Trump has always used dark language on the campaign trail, but is it actually getting more extreme? I mean, you're right, Juana. I mean, dehumanizing language has been a big part of his politics. But he has ramped up the autocratic language in ways that we're just not really used to hearing on the campaign trail. I mean, this weekend, Trump told supporters in New Hampshire that immigrants were, quote, poisoning the blood of our country, which the Biden campaign and some scholars likened to the words of Adolf Hitler. And Trump, he's cast this election as, quote,

our final battle. I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. Another big difference is that his targets have shifted. In 2016, he saved his most vitriolic attacks against outsiders, migrants, Muslims, remember the Muslim ban. But in this campaign, his attacks in many ways have been sharper against political opponents right here in the United States. He's called political opponents vermin who needed to be rooted out. Now, of course, Trump has pushed back on these characterizations and claims Biden is the greater threat to democracy. But it's Trump's language, particularly against people within the United States, that's leading some of these

political scholars to draw these alarming comparisons to past autocratic leaders and dictators. Right. And Odette, you have been looking specifically at Trump's rhetoric on social media. Tell us what you've been seeing there. Yeah, well, I've really focused on what Trump's activity has been on Truth Social, because you'll recall after January 6th, he was booted off of Twitter and Facebook until relatively recently. And on Truth Social, there have been a couple of trends. First, his volume of posts has really been climbing over time, especially starting in the early summer. His number of posts daily has grown. And this is likely attributed to two things.

First, campaign season is really getting into gear, but also to the fact that the number of indictments were piling up. And so a major theme of his posts have related to those cases. But the second trend that we're seeing is that we're seeing him invoking much darker language in his posts, particularly about what he says the future would look like without a second Trump term. I spoke to Kirsten Tai about this. She's a professor at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and she's studied Trump's rhetoric both online and offline since he ran for president in 2015. One of the things I've been noticing lately on Truth Social is the framing of next year's election as sort of a last chance for America. So he's sharing content and his supporters are sharing content with the message of this is our final battle to save America.

And the implication that this is what the very last election for our country. And Franco, you have been speaking to people who study political rhetoric. How is it that in this day and age, sounding like a strongman can be a successful political tactic? Right. I mean, Donald Trump knows how to use words for effect, and he knows how to use words as a weapon. I mean, he says these outrageous things to stoke his base. And, you know, I've been at rallies, and people are laughing at these comments. And it also keeps the spotlight on Trump.

But those who study political rhetoric say Trump has crossed the line from flirting with these autocratic themes into real strongman messaging. I talked to Jennifer Murcia. She's a professor at Texas A&M University. She says Trump is following the authoritarian playbook. It's always the same process. They narrate a nation in crisis. They say that politics is war. The enemy cheats. The rules no longer apply because they've already broken them. Therefore, put me into power because I will break the rules for you. I will do to them what they have already done to you. And look, you know, Juana, there's also a

portion of Trump's base that wants a strongman leader. You know, they like what they're hearing. OK, say more about that, Odette. Well, earlier, Franco brought in some tape of Trump using words like retribution and warrior. And these are words that resonate in a very particular way with a growing far right religious movement that's increasingly influencing politics at the state and federal levels and which seeks to impose, quote, biblical governance in the United States. You know, that's not a popular idea in this country. But Trump legitimized those voices during his first presidency. And through him, they see a path toward their goal. There's another part of his base also, one that we've all heard about, which is QAnon.

Yeah, it's still a thing. You know, people who believe in that conspiracy theory see Trump as a kind of savior against forces of evil. And analysis from Media Matters for America found that since Trump moved his online activity to Truth Social primarily, he's amplified QAnon promoting accounts much more than he ever did before. And this, you know, final battle language that he's using, this also speaks to these parts of his base who are actually counting on an authoritarian regime if he is reelected. I mean, Odette, so former President Trump is using language

that resonates with a more extreme portion of his base, but do we know anything about how they respond to it? Well, there was this interesting court filing in one of the Trump cases recently where a court security officer claimed that Trump's social media posts correlated directly to threats against people in those cases. So specifically, he documented what happened when Trump's posts targeted the law clerk for a New York judge. He said that the number of threatening voicemails she received when transcribed amounted to more than 275 single-spaced pages, and half of that was anti-Semitic. But on the flip side, Juana,

when the judge in that case imposed a gag order on Trump, those threats decreased. Okay, Frank, I'll let you have the last word here. Stepping back a bit, has Trump's rhetoric had a larger impact on politics in Washington? You know what, it was just a few weeks ago that there were members of Congress and their spouses who are getting threats over votes for the next Republican House Speaker. I mean, the reality is we're living at a moment where studies show more Americans, and it's particularly among Republicans, who feel that resorting to violence may be necessary to save the country. NPR's Franco Ordonez and Odette Youssef, thanks to both of you. Thank you.

Thank you. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Summers.