Donald Trump's recent fundraising emails appear unhinged and delusional even by his standards. They offer numerous examples of his enraged state of mind, his appetite for conspiratorial thinking and outright lies, his disregard for reality, his cult-like power over his followers and his increasingly explicit contempt for democracy and the rule of law.
Although his language at times appears farcical, these are real-time warnings that Americans who oppose the MAGA agenda should take seriously. Consider this example, sent about 10 days ago after Trump had attended the early days of his New York civil trial:
Friend,
I just finished the third day of my sham trial in New York. For the past three days, I sat in a courtroom in the city I grew up in, the city I raised my family in, the city I built a tremendous organization in, the city I loved — and I listened to the Democrats fervently try to destroy everything my family and I have built. The Left wants to take down “Trump Tower” — a world-famous New York landmark, they want to dissolve the Trump Organization, and their ultimate goal is to financially ruin me and my family.
It was also here in New York that I was wrongfully arrested by a Soros-backed District Attorney earlier this year. It was the first time I was ever arrested in my entire life. ... But the truth is: this is not the same city I knew and loved. Frankly, this is not even the same country we once knew. Radical Left thugs have let crime, vandalism, filth, left-wing extremism, and illegal immigration pollute what was once the greatest city in the world.
And that’s what they want to do to all of America. Friend, I’m not running for President for myself. I’m running because I truly believe our country is dying. When I go back to a place like New York and see what’s happened, my resolve grows even stronger to save America. 2024 is our final chance to fix the greatest country in history — and I have absolute faith that with your support, we can turn it around, and turn it around FAST!
This one went out to Trump's massive mailing list last Monday:
This week, as you watched yours truly stand trial as a completely innocent man, you’ve seen exactly what the Radical Democrats' endgame really is. … A pursuit of absolute power at the expense of our free Republic, our Constitution, and not just my civil liberties, but YOUR freedom as well. The power-drunk Democrats, TERRIFIED by the latest polls that show us LEADING Crooked Joe by 10 POINTS, will do anything — truly, anything — to destroy the one man who can and will defeat Biden in 2024. ... They’re attempting to strip me of my livelihood and take away my incredible business. They want to harass my family and take away my home, Trump Tower. And now, they’re trying to GAG me for the rest of the election to prevent me from even criticizing Crooked Joe. … All of this to CANCEL OUT YOUR VOTE!
Our Founding Fathers would be rolling in their graves if they could see what is happening to the America they left us — once the freest country in the world. But these Deep State thugs truly are monsters…
They would trade our Republic for a tin-pot dictatorship in a heartbeat if it meant an everlasting grip on power. And mark my words, if they succeed at INTERFERING in this election, in the FINAL BATTLE for our country, America will never be the same.
His movement of "more than 74 MILLION patriots," Trump concludes, "will NEVER, EVER SURRENDER our country to Third World Marxist tyranny!" These fundraising emails, and Trump’s larger communications strategy, offer almost a textbook example of how fascists and autocrats seek to erode democracy by maintaining and expanding their control over their followers, and bulid political power more broadly.
Trump also uses these emails to threaten or intimidate prosecutors, judges and law enforcement officials (as well as potential witnesses and jurors) who seek to hold him accountable for his crimes.
While those outside the MAGAverse are understandably tempted to mock Trump’s inflated or hyperbolic language, these emails have proven highly lucrative for the ex-president. The Trump campaign reports that it took in almost $46 million in donations in the third quarter of 2023. Trump is intelligent enough, after his fashion; he knows what his followers want and gives it to them.
I asked Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M and the author of "Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump," for her thoughts about Trump’s language in recent fundraising emails. She responded by email:
The goal of fascism is to turn politics into warfare. To do this, [fascist leaders] narrate a world of chaos, corruption and hypocrisy. They position their opposition as enemies who cheat, as untrustworthy and determined to undermine and destroy all that's good and noble. If the fascist can convince his followers that there is so much scary chaos and so many enemies, then the fascist rises to power because people want the "strong arm" of the fascist to solve problems.
Trump follows this fascist playbook to the letter: There are determined and scary enemies. Those enemies have broken all of the rules to attack Trump, whose only crime was trying to defend his followers from their attacks. Trump suffers for his followers, so his followers owe him. They owe him their loyalty, votes and money. Trump vows to continue to fight on, because his fight is really their fight. His followers should stand with him and give him power so he can keep fighting for them.
Federico Finchelstein, a historian at the New School and author of “A Brief History of Fascist Lies,” argues that Trump’s recent fundraising emails offer evidence of his “innovative” ability to combine his roles as an aspiring dictator and a supposedly successful businessman selling “salvation” to his followers:
As usual Trump combines distorting reality, turning facts into lies about imminent destruction and persecution by total enemies (who are not even human — he calls them monsters) and salvation via donation. The first elements (demonization and apocalyptic fears and promises) are rather typical of fascists like Hitler and Mussolini, but the idea of giving money to the leader to avoid calamity and destruction is typically Trumpist.
If fascism was a totalitarian ideology, movement and regime, Trumpism is that plus a personal business. The fascist identification between people, nation and leader mutates in Trumpism. It becomes not only a wannabe fascist project but also a business. ... Trump promises a new salvation that invokes the racist past but also is indifferent to it. Reaction and lies about the future are combined by Trump.
Trump has repeatedly shown himself to be mentally unwell and to possess a diseased mind and corrupt personality and evil character. Trump’s fundraising emails and other communications reflect those traits and their resulting behavior.
Dr. Lance Dodes, a former clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a training and supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, elaborated on this:
Many observers have noted that, in his paranoia, Donald Trump attributes to his “enemies” the exact qualities that describe himself. For example, when he writes of people who are charging him with crimes, and people trying to uphold democracy, that “they would trade our Republic for a tin-pot dictatorship in a heartbeat if it meant an everlasting grip on power,” he has perfectly described himself. This capacity to falsely redefine others by projecting into them one’s own traits is called projective identification. When practiced repeatedly with no insight, as Trump does, it is an indication of severe mental illness, an inability to perceive reality.
The only fortunate aspect of Trump’s comments is that they provide a concise summary of himself.
Marcel Danesi, a professor emeritus of linguistic anthropology at the University of Toronto and the author of “Politics, Lies and Conspiracy Theories: A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective," was struck by Trump’s language suggesting that he views the 2024 presidential campaign as an apocalyptic struggle:
There are three aspects of his rant that stand out to me. First, as a master of projection, Trump knows how to redirect and deflect accusations against him onto his accusers (real or imagined), twisting them for his followers as evidence of an ongoing pseudo-coup by the “Marxist deep state.” Second, Trump never fails to portray accusations against him as an act of war against everyone’s freedom, drumming up conspiracy language of a behind- the-scenes “endgame” that the deep state is planning against America. Rather than a rant of an accused criminal, his followers interpret what he says as the rallying cry of a leader fighting “tin-pot dictators,” as he angrily states, while in reality it is Trump who actually aspires to become a dictator. Third, in step with his usual pseudo-evangelical fervor, he is calling for a “final battle” which, in concrete terms, means that he is anticipating a desperate fight for re-election, framing it in apocalyptic terms — language that has broad appeal among his followers.
In his fundraising emails, interviews and other communications, Trump is teaching and preaching to his MAGA cultists as well as a larger universe of Americans who are at least somewhat sympathetic to their cause. It's easy for those outside TrumpWorld to become exhausted by this language or inured to it — or, even worse, to laugh at Trump and his movement of many millions.
But liberal schadenfreude and an inflated sense of superiority do nothing to change the fundamental political dynamic: Trump is an aspiring dictator who is effectively even with President Biden in the polls. Ignoring him and his movement will most certainly not stop them.
Americans who believe in genuine democracy owe it to themselves and the future to take Trump and his neofascist followers seriously. They are not kidding about their threats and plans to remake American society in their own image.
