A bloodbath. The end of democracy. Riots in the streets. Bedlam in the country. Donald Trump has made apocalyptic imagery a defining feature of his presidential election campaign, warning supporters that if he does not win – and avoid criminal prosecution – the US will enter its death throes.
The prophecies of doom, repeated ad nauseam at rallies and on social media, have raised fears that the former president is making an electoral tinderbox that could explode in November. While there has been much commentary assessing the implications of a Trump win, some experts warn that a Trump defeat could provide an equally severe stress test of American democracy.
“Regardless of whether Donald Trump wins or loses, there’s going to be violence,” said Michael Fanone, a retired police officer who was seriously injured by pro-Trump rioters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. “If Donald Trump loses, he’s not going to concede and he’s going to inspire people to commit acts of violence, just like he did in the weeks and months leading up to January 6, 2021.
“If he wins, I also believe that there’s going to be violence committed by his supporters, targeting people who previously tried to hold him to account, whether it was members of the press, average citizens like myself, Department of Justice officials, state and federal prosecutors. I believe him when he says that he will have his vengeance.”
Trump has long sought to sow distrust in the electoral system while using rhetoric outside the boundaries of modern political discourse, dehumanising opponents and immigrants and portraying the US as a nation on the verge of collapse.
During his first run for president, in 2016, he encouraged his supporters to “knock the crap out” of protesters and said he would pay their legal bills if they got into trouble. Should he be denied the presidential nomination at the Republican national convention in Cleveland, he warned: “I think you’d have riots.”
In the summer of 2020, Trump is said to have called for the military to shoot peaceful protesters in Washington during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. When he disputed his election defeat that year, he suggested that an adverse ruling by the Pennsylvania supreme court would “induce violence in the streets”.
Then, at a rally before his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, Trump said: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness … If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”
After the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August 2022, he predicted that “terrible things are going to happen”, and then quoted the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham warning of “riots in the streets” if Trump were charged.
Since declaring his candidacy in November 2022, Trump has intensified inflammatory and racist statements on the campaign trail. He has promised to pardon January 6 insurrectionists, suggested that Gen Mark Milley should be executed and asserted that immigrants who are in the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country”.
At last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump declared: “This is the final battle, they know it. I know it, you know it, and everybody knows it, this is it. Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country.”
He threatened “potential death & destruction” if he was charged by the Manhattan district attorney over a hush-money payment and criticised those urging his supporters to remain peaceful, fuming on his Truth Social platform: “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!”
In November, at a rally in New Hampshire, he promised that he would “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”. In January this year, returning to New Hampshire, Trump told supporters: “I only want to be a dictator for one day.”
Addressing efforts to remove him from the ballot under the 14th amendment, Trump warned that “if we don’t [get treated fairly], our country’s in big, big trouble. Does everybody understand what I’m saying? I think so.” And referring to those 88 criminal charges that could yet scupper his electoral chances, he opined: “I think they feel this is the way they’re going to try and win, and that’s not the way it goes. It’ll be bedlam in the country. It’s a very bad thing. It’s a very bad precedent. It’s the opening of a Pandora’s box.”
Campaigning this month in North Carolina, Trump claimed that Biden’s immigration policies amounted to a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States” because, in his view, they allow millions of people to stream across the border with Mexico.
History has shown that Trump’s words are taken both seriously and literally by his base. Hannah Muldavin, a former spokesperson for the congressional committee that investigated the January 6 attack, said: “We know when Donald Trump says something – whether it’s in a tweet or in a speech – his supporters listen.
“That’s what we saw on January 6. His tweet – ‘Be there. Will be wild!’ – led to a rise in activity online that led people to organise and come to DC on January 6. When Trump uses this incendiary language, it’s concerning.”
Last week, appearing alongside a Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, Trump again referred to immigrants in the country illegally in subhuman terms. “In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion,” he said. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it.”
At the same rally, Trump warned: “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” At the time he was discussing the need to protect the car industry from overseas competition, and Trump and allies later said he had been referring to the car industry when he used the term. Biden’s campaign team rejected that defence.
Once again, Trump has crossed lines and broken conventions like no other politician in his lifetime. Daniel Ziblatt, a political scientist at Harvard University and co-author of How Democracies Die, said: “Since 1945 I don’t think there has been a politician in a democracy who’s used such authoritarian language, ever. It’s hard to think of anybody. Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin when running for office don’t use the kind of language that Donald Trump uses, so that’s pretty notable.”
As historical examples around the world have shown, such language can create a permission structure for violence. Ziblatt added: “No matter what happens, there will be some effort to deny the results of the election if he loses. My best-case scenario is a decisive defeat so that his claims of a stolen election are just simply not credible. But if it’s close, as it seems like all indicators suggest, then I would expect violence and threats of violence and at least protests of the sort that we experienced in 2021.”
Opinion polls suggest another tight race. Several have shown Trump with a narrow lead and, in the bars and cafes of Washington DC, it is not hard to overhear idle chatter predicting a Trump victory as more likely than not. This, combined with Trump’s own exaggerated projections, raises the prospect that his supporters will take victory for granted – and assume foul play if, in fact, he loses again.
Larry Jacobs, director of the center for the study of politics and governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Donald Trump is engaged in a misinformation campaign both to raise the expectation of his supporters that he is going to win, he’s ahead, it’s in the bag, and also to set the conditions for claiming that the election was stolen if he doesn’t win. Obviously, these polls are far out and not predictive but he’s clearly using them now to set the conditions.”
In an early preview of how aggressively Trump’s supporters might react to defeat, Charlie Kirk, a far-right political influencer, told an audience at a faith-based event last week: “I want to make sure that we all make a commitment that if this election doesn’t go our way, the next day we fight. It’s a very important thing; a lot of people don’t want to hear that. They say: ‘What do you mean it doesn’t go our way? It has to go our way. We have to win.’ I agree.”
Trump’s divisive rhetoric and election denialism in 2020 culminated in the attack on the US Capitol. But members of Congress returned the same night to certify Biden’s election victory, and Trump reluctantly departed the White House two weeks later. This time Biden is the incumbent and Trump has no control over the levers of government, making a replay of the insurrection in Washington less likely.
Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots movement, said: “Trump is already spreading lies that this election is rigged and we know there is no realistic scenario where he concedes after losing.
“One big difference between his loss this year and 2020 is this time they’re better prepared and have already gone through a dress rehearsal. But the other big difference is he won’t be a sitting president – he’ll just be a sore loser who the nation rejected in record numbers two elections in a row.”
Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington and a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, added: “What I fear is that the repetition of violent rhetoric will lead to the normalisation of violent acts. There’s no sugarcoating it. This is a dangerous period for American constitutional government.
“In the end, the institutions are no better or worse than the men and women who are sworn to defend them and, if they do their duty, we’ll be OK. If they’re stormed, or if they’re paralysed by fear, then there’s a chance that they would not hold. It’s more likely than not that it won’t happen, but this election will be the ultimate stress test.”
