In the final stretch of the election campaign, the Democrats are picking up on new evidence of Trump’s extremism

CNN
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Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz on Tuesday accused Donald Trump of descending into “madness” after reports that the former president craved the loyalty of the “kind of generals like Hitler.”

Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris seized on the report in The Atlantic as senior party figures warned of bleak days ahead if Trump wins the presidency in 13 days, given his often-expressed autocratic instincts.

The tense atmosphere surrounding a head-to-head election campaign became significantly more intense after Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg published an article saying that Trump had said in a private conversation as president: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.” The report was corroborated in the article by Trump’s former White House chief of staff, John Kelly. Trump’s alleged fixation on Hitler was also supported by material in several books, including one by CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

In a separate interview with The New York Times, Kelly said Trump fits the definition of a fascist.

During a rally in Wisconsin, Walz used new references to Trump’s extremism on a day when other senior Democratic figures raised what they saw as the grim specter of an unleashed Trump second term while trying to rally support for Harris.

“Don’t be the frog in the boiling water and think this is OK,” said the Minnesota governor, who served in the Army National Guard, referring to the revelations in The Atlantic. “As a 24-year veteran of our military, this makes me sick as hell, and it should make you sick, too.”

“Guys, the guard rails are gone. Trump is falling into this madness. A former president of the United States and candidate for president of the United States says he wants generals like Adolf Hitler. Think about it,” he added.

Walz pointed to the Supreme Court’s conservative majority’s recent ruling granting presidents significant immunity for official acts committed while in office, as he sought to stoke public concern about the nature of a second term for an ex-president who had already tried to overturn the law to overturn the result of a democratic election.

Trump’s campaign denied the exchange about Trump and Hitler reported in The Atlantic. “That is absolutely wrong. President Trump never said that,” said campaign adviser Alex Pfeiffer. And in response to Kelly’s comments to the Times, campaign communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement that the retired Marine general “is completely at odds with these debunked stories that he made up because he did not serve his president well during his tenure as chief of staff.” disgraced.” ”

But even as excitement over the Atlantic report grew, Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, heeded Democrats’ warnings that they were leading the country down a dark path.

After Trump mused in recent interviews about deploying the military or National Guard against “enemies from within” (he even meant top Democrats) and warned that television networks like CBS should lose their broadcast licenses, he launched a sharp attack on Harris during a rally in North Carolina.

“Is she drinking? Is she taking drugs? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I have no idea,” he said. Earlier in the day, he called her “lazy” – a racist term often used against black Americans.

Trump also said he would call on Congress to pass a law saying anyone who burns the American flag should spend a year in prison. “We’re going to ask Congress – they say it’s unconstitutional, I don’t agree – to impose a one-year prison sentence for anyone who burns the American flag.”

Vance, meanwhile, said a future Trump administration could consider deporting DACA recipients — children who were brought to the United States illegally but have built a life here — as part of its tough immigration policies. “If there are 25 million illegal immigrants in this country, you have to deport people, otherwise there will no longer be a border. It’s that simple,” the Ohio senator said in Arizona.

With the race still deadlocked and Harris potentially needing a perfect run through the blue-wall swing states to win, leading Democrats on Tuesday invoked what they see as the extreme possibilities of Trump’s possible return to the Oval Office. The strategy closely resembled an attempt to frighten the party base in order to increase voter turnout.

Still, there is a potential flaw in playing the fear card. The story of Trump’s turbulent presidency is no secret, although memories may be fading. While he exploits voters’ concerns about the high cost of living and immigration, attempts to remind the electorate of his years in the White House have not yet been crucial. And while Trump’s ferocity may anger some critical, moderate voters, his strongman has once again led him to the doorstep of the White House. That’s partly because his antics seem like a strength to many like-minded Americans.

President Joe Biden delivered a dire warning Tuesday in New Hampshire about what could lie ahead.

“If Trump wins, this nation changes,” said Biden, who hoped he had ended the MAGA movement’s grip on power when he unseated Trump in 2020. “We can only do two things: guarantee that he doesn’t do it, or if he does, make sure we have the strongest Democratic majority we can get,” he added.

Former President Barack Obama, while savagely denouncing Trump, also suggested that the November election was about existential problems of American values ​​and democratic rights. During a campaign stop in Wisconsin, Obama warned that Trump would repeal the Affordable Care Act, destroy core U.S. values ​​and repeat his chaotic neglect of the Covid-19 pandemic if he made it back to the Oval Office. And the 44th president doubled down on Democrats’ warnings about Trump’s age and name recognition, reversing his successor’s earlier strategy against Biden on him. “We don’t need to see what an older, crazier Donald Trump looks like without guardrails,” Obama warned.

The vice president, meanwhile, made her closing argument that Trump poses a fundamental threat to America’s character in an interview with NBC, while pledging to tackle the high food and real estate prices that her rival has used to lay out his own nightmare vision Nation in crisis.

“The American people, at this point in two weeks, face a very, very serious decision about the future of our country, and that includes whether we are a country that values ​​a president who respects his duty.” “Hold that Constitution of the United States,” she said in the interview.

Harris, who will appear at a CNN town hall on Wednesday evening, warned: “The American people have a choice to leave behind division and hatred and bring our country together.”

Harris and Trump court Hispanics

Harris previously unveiled a new program to woo key Latino voters – promising to increase access to good jobs, job training and housing – as she fights for a regular Democratic district that Trump has made inroads into.

But at a roundtable with Latin American businesspeople in Miami, Trump, as he so often does, didn’t stick to the event’s ostensible theme and descended into falsehoods and malice. Calling Harris “lazy” was a typical case of the ex-president branding an opponent with the transgression he was accused of for not bothering to hold the event – it was held at his golf club held in Doral. And Trump has canceled a series of interviews in recent days. His comparatively tight schedule raises questions about the 78-year-old’s ability to withstand the rigors of the hectic final days of a presidential campaign.

The former president also indulged in his unique brand of fear-mongering, which he typically uses to fire up his base. He warned that if Harris wins on November 5, there may never be another election. “People don’t know who the hell Harris is, but now they’re finding out she’s a radical left-wing nut,” Trump said. “We can’t risk losing this election because if we lose this election, we may not have a country anymore.”

Trump’s words were reminiscent of the inflammatory language he used in the lead-up to his supporters’ insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was an attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory. And if there’s one candidate in this race who has shown disrespect for democratic elections, it’s him.

Tuesday’s increasingly grim invocations of the future highlighted the deep divisions in American politics that are making the 2024 election an almost existential matter for both sides.

US elections used to be seen as a regular attempt to heal the country’s political wounds – if only for a limited period of time. There’s no way that’s going to happen this year.