Brunswick Beacon, 03.28.24
Donald Trump’s rhetoric has grown increasingly erratic. He says he beat Obama instead of Clinton in 2016. He confuses Obama with Biden, then claims he’s being sarcastic. He can’t explain why he said, “Nikki Haley was in charge of security” at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (She wasn’t.) Most alarming is his increasing use of eliminationist, violent language.
It was always there. In 2016, he urged supporters to “knock the crap” out of protestors, “I promise you; I will pay for the legal fees." In June 2020, with demonstrators protesting the police killing of George Floyd, Defense Secretary Mark Esper says Trump, “wanted to deploy active-duty troops on the street of Washington, D.C., and suggested that we shoot Americans in the street.”
Trump is running for president to escape liability in the four criminal cases for which he is out on bail. The desperate stakes have seen him ratchet up the violent and eliminationist language to new heights.
Trump mocked the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi by a Trump supporter, called for shoplifters to be shot on sight, and for then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to be executed.
He begins rallies by literally saluting those convicted of violent insurrection, and calls them, “the horribly and unfairly treated January 6 hostages.” He promises to free them if elected.
Trump calls opponents “thugs” and “vermin,” and accuses immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.” This is the same eliminationist language Hitler used in “Mein Kampf” to prepare Germans for the Holocaust.
Now, Trump is invoking the final solution. He calls migrants “animals…not people,” promises to use the military to herd them into mass deportation camps, and warns: “If I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the country."
Trump changed the GOP from a party that supported law enforcement to one that embraces political violence and celebrates violent attacks on police.
Linda Baker
Leland