Column: Trump is escalating his anti-democratic rhetoric. It’s time to listen

Hello and happy Tuesday. There are 20 days until the election, and today we’re talking F-words: fear, fascism and what has become the dirtiest word in the American vernacular, facts.

In 2018, many of us (apparently about 50% of us) found it distasteful when Trump referred to El Salvador, Haiti and some African nations as “shithole countries” and began experimenting with the rhetoric that Black and brown immigrants were dangerous.

Though it hadn’t been widely reported yet, Trump had by then already started his brutal systemic policy of forcibly separating children from parents at the border — a tactic meant to deter families from coming to the U.S. without documentation, but which left thousands of parents with no way to reunite with, or even locate, their kids.

Cruelty, of course, was the point, not the by-product — but six years ago we were so much younger and naive. So on we went, thinking it could not get much worse.

This year, with the help of his lap/attack dog JD Vance, he again targeted Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. I don’t need to repeat those false pet-kebabing claims, but it’s safe to say that the once-sleepy Midwestern town will forever be linked with this bilious lie.

I believed Springfield was the low point of the election. Silly me, because this week Trump has escalated his rage-filled and violent rhetoric to such an alarming level that we can’t allow our deer-in-the-headlights defense to keep us from calling it out.

Trump visits a furniture store in Valdosta, Ga., damaged by Hurricane Helene late last month.

(Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)

‘Liberation Day’

Trump has for a good while now claimed that America has been “invaded” by immigrants, and is an “occupied” country.

More recently, he has begun calling Nov. 5 — the day of an election he hopes to win — “Liberation Day,” as if troops will be storming the beaches of Corpus Christi.

“We are now known, all throughout the world, as OCCUPIED AMERICA...But to everyone here in Colorado and all across our nation, I make you this vow: November 5th, 2024 will be LIBERATION DAY in America. I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered—and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them the hell OUT OF OUR COUNTRY,” Trump wrote on social media last week.

But he didn’t stop there. Sunday on Fox News, he threatened to use the military on U.S. citizens who oppose him. Speaking to Fox host Maria Bartiromo about the possibility of violence after the election, Trump claimed America’s greatest threat is “the people from within,” who might have to be dealt with by force.

“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,” Trump said.

Election chaos

But fascism is a big word, and a lot of people glaze over when they hear it. So fine.

What if Trump isn’t preparing to rain down big-”F” fascism upon us? What if it’s something smaller, but no less ugly — authoritarianism driven perhaps by ego and greed, staffed by Vance-type folks who don’t mind a rapacious and corrupt leader if it furthers their white Christian agenda?

Joan Donovan is an assistant journalism professor at Boston University and an expert in extremism. A study she did recently looked at the legal filings of Jan. 6 rioters, and found that 20% of them went to the Capitol because they believed Trump had asked them to go.

Donovan contends Trump is “borrowing” strategies from the regime of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines.

Duterte came to power on a platform that promised to squash the elites, alleviate poverty, end government corruption and solve the nation’s drug problems — by any means necessary.

“The funeral parlors will be packed,” Duterte promised. And they were.

Donovan points out that, like Trump, Duterte “demonized the ‘dregs of humanity,’” to convince people that a strongman, unafraid to step over boundaries of law, was the only way to save their country from catastrophic destruction.

The Musk factor

But it isn’t just Trump who gets to cross boundaries under this scheme.

So do his most ardent followers — whether it’s billionaire Elon Musk supercharging propaganda on his social media cesspool and posturing for a proposed job to gut federal services in an Orwellian-named Department of Government Efficiency, or some guy with a gun, somewhere he shouldn’t be, helping to clean out undesirables.

“They really do react to this rhetoric, and they really do believe themselves to be within the bounds of the law” when taking matters into their own hands, Donovan said.

In North Carolina, government aid workers had to pull back over the weekend after a report that National Guard troops came across armed militia members “hunting” workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to the Washington Post.

That turned out to be its own false rumor — but Monday, authorities arrested a man armed with a rifle and handgun whose threats against FEMA had sparked the erroneous militia report.

That unrest and uncertainty overtaking a disaster area is a direct result of right-wing rhetoric, which has gone so far as to claim the federal government is seizing the land of victims who lost homes and businesses.

North Carolina and Springfield are disturbing proof that even if many of us don’t take Trump seriously, too many others do. It is urgent that we listen to, and understand, what Trump is saying — even when we’d rather not.

Watch Fox. No, really

So what’s a democracy-loving American, Republican or Democrat, to do?

You have to listen to Trump.

If we don’t know what the MAGA folks are saying — and believing — we lose the ability to see the bigger picture of what is happening. If we don’t pay attention to the lies Trump is telling about FEMA, we can’t understand how significant it is that a lone man with a gun is threatening aid workers.

That man is the intended result: A person so removed from our shared reality that no impartial fact can sway him from his fear, rage and commitment.

With or without weapons, we will see more of these desperate Americans in coming days.

In Congress, in state governments, in local election boards, MAGA believers are being asked to prepare to contest the election — operating on the notion that fraud is inevitable, and Trump needs their help.

Those asks include going to polls to monitor and even record voters — to expose the voter fraud they so firmly believe stole the last election. They are being asked to watch poll workers as they open mail-in ballots, to check signatures as much as elections officials will allow and look for malfeasance. They are being asked to keep a close eye on Black and brown people who they believe are being paid or compelled by Democrats to illegally vote.

“One of the Greatest Examples of DOJ Weaponization is the fact that they are suing Virginia to put ALL of the Illegal Voters, which were fully exposed and removed by the important work of Governor Glenn Youngkin, back on the Voter Rolls. Obviously, this was done so that they can CHEAT on the Election. So sad! What has happened to our once Great Country?” Trump wrote this week on his Truth Social site.

As Donovan puts it, we are in an information war with a “real-time assault on facts.” We face a barrage of one damaging lie after another — but some of us take those bullets like blessings, wholeheartedly embracing this alternate reality of an America dying from diversity, and a twisted mission to save it with hate.

“It is a danger to the very practice of democracy itself,” Donovan said of the relentless lying.

Nov. 5 will not liberate any of us from this post-fact reality — the election will not vanquish it, one way or another.

But ignoring it is like turning our backs to a loaded gun.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: North Carolina authorities arrest armed man after threats against FEMA workers
The hard reality: America Is on the Brink of a Great Political Realignment. It’s Already Visible in Arizona
The L.A. Times special: Man arrested at Trump rally denies assassination plot, threatens to sue Riverside County sheriff
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

P.S. Goodbye Lilly, and thank you.

Lilly Ledbetter, the Alabama grandmother who changed history when she decided she should be paid the same as her male colleagues, died Saturday. The federal act named for her, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, was the first bill signed by then-President Obama.

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.