Trump is Now the Candidate Who Insults Voters as Deplorable

As I wrote last week about presidential campaign media strategies, Donald Trump is “strictly focused on animating conservatives … and spreading misinformation, preferring interviewers who let him lie with impunity,” because he is “determined to maintain the political polarization that toxified American politics.” In turn, almost all of his interviews are on conservative media platforms.

One of those interview was this past Sunday on Fox News. Asked what he would do with “outside agitators” on Election Day, Trump responded, “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within … We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics … 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.”

If your initial reaction was to charitably conclude Trump is referring to a hypothetical tiny group of violent extremists, Trump made sure to let you know he did not deserve the benefit of the doubt.

He included Representative “Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, who’s a total sleazebag [and] is going to become a senator, but I call him the enemy from within.” Schiff is a Democrat who led the prosecution in Trump’s first impeachment trial.

Then in the next breath he baselessly accused CBS News of editing the 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris to make her look good, and so, “CBS should lose their license for that.”

“The enemy from within” encompasses anyone who doesn’t give Trump blind loyalty. If you speak out against Trump, if you fact-check Trump, if you simply give attention to someone other than Trump, then you’re the enemy too.

And we’ve already seen Trump, as president, threaten to investigate or prosecute people across the ideological and political spectrum. You don’t have to be a “radical left lunatic” to get tarred by Trump’s brush.

Past Democratic presidential candidates who dared to negatively characterize groups of voters, in far less threatening terms, were pilloried as condescending and elitist.

Let’s judge Trump by the same standard.

But first, here’s what’s leading the Washington Monthly website:

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“Universities are the Enemy”: The Dark Belief Behind Project 2025’s Higher Education Agenda: Carrie N. Baker, Smith College professor and Ms. Magazine contributing editor, exposes Project 2025’s plans to undermine liberal arts programs across the country. Click here for the full story.

California State Universities: “A Launchpad for the Middle Class”: Associate Editor Marc Novicoff interviews Ellen Neufeldt, president of California State University San Marcos, about how regional public universities help promote social mobility. Click here for the full story.

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You may recall that time in the 2016 general election when Hillary Clinton offered an analysis of Trump’s voters. She said at a fundraiser:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric.

Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America … That other basket of people who are people who feel that government has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they are just desperate for change … They don’t buy everything he says but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different … Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

This was a ham-fisted attempt to encourage Democrats not to write off all Trump supporters as irredeemable bigots. Trump seized the opening. “I was … deeply shocked and alarmed … to hear my opponent attack, slander, smear, demean these wonderful, amazing people who are supporting our campaign by the millions.”

Clinton partially walked it back in a statement. (“I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong.”) But the comment cast a shadow over the rest of the campaign.

During the 2008 primary, Barack Obama was hammered for how he characterized the despair among white working-class voters during a fundraiser:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and—like a lot of small towns in the Midwest—the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. And nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate, and they have not.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, and they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Back then, it was Clinton who pounced, saying, “I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small town America. Senator Obama’s remarks are elitist and they are out of touch.” Obama sheepishly explained, “I didn’t say it as well as I should have.”

The gaffe proved non-fatal at the ballot box, even though for years Republicans would remind white working-class voters of the “cling to guns or religion” line to drive a wedge between them and Obama.

The political lesson: Don’t perform amateur political science or sociology. Don’t criticize, or even characterize, constituents. Stick to criticizing opposing candidates.

Harris has clearly absorbed the lesson.

For example, Howard Stern recently asked her, “Do you think there are people who will not vote for a woman because she’s a woman?” Harris avoided any accusation of sexism by voters. Her entire response was, “Listen, I’ve been the first woman in almost every position I’ve had. So I believe that men and women support women in leadership, and that’s been my life experience.”

Trump, however, thrives on polarization. Building unshakeable loyalty with one group of voters requires instilling fear about others. He not only looks down on people willing to oppose him, he brands them as the enemy and deserving of violent punishment.

An “enemy from within” is far worse than a “basket of deplorables.” But Trump’s comments from eight years ago still apply. We should be shocked and alarmed to hear a presidential candidate attack, slander, smear, demean the millions of people who are exercising their right to speak out against him and who will vote to deny his return to office.

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Best,

Bill Scher, Washington Monthly politics editor

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