For many observers of the coming presidential election, especially those overseas, Donald Trump and his Maga-infused Republican party represent a foreboding stress test for American democracy.
Historians have weighed in with analysis that Trump now heads a movement close to fascism, Trump himself has spoken of “enemies within”, he and his followers held a mass rally of racist rhetoric in a New York city venue known for an infamous Nazi gathering before the second world war and his language has been tinged with violent imagery.
Yet, in Trump’s world, and those of his followers and campaign surrogates, it is the Democrats who are to blame for the degraded discourse in American politics, their rhetoric a sign that they demonize the other side. It is Kamala Harris who is far outside the American mainstream. It is Joe Biden who is a Marxist. It is the Democratic party who plots a complete remaking of the American way of life. They are even, they argue, trying to take away Americans’ hamburgers.
When millions of American Republicans vote on Tuesday they will believe that it is they – by casting their vote for Trump – who are the ones saving American democracy.
The alternate reality “mirror world” that Trump has built for himself and his followers features them as the victims of their political opponents, despite Trump’s rampant use of insults and heated comments. And he casts himself as the savior from this persecution, again framing his election in the final days as he only able to fix the country that Democrats have broken, a retread of his 2016 slogan of “I alone can fix it”.
The mirror world effect is a feature of the 2024 campaign – a place where Trump’s liabilities are twisted to become his opponents’, a place where he can call people names but it’s an outrage when others do, a place where Trump is saving democracy despite his attempts to overthrow an election.
Perhaps no incident more clearly shows the way the same word can be twisted differently in this flipside America than the way a “garbage” gaffe played out this week.
At a rally in Arizona last Thursday, Trump called the US a “garbage can” because of migrants, noting how he’d never used the term before to describe the country but that it was accurate, though he had previously said the people around Harris were “scum” and “absolute garbage.” Days later, at a Madison Square Garden rally filled with opening acts that lobbed insults and diatribes at perceived enemies, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.
Trump sought to distance himself from the comedian by saying he didn’t know him and by claiming that Puerto Ricans love him. “Every time I go outside I see somebody from Puerto Rico. They give me a hug and a kiss,” he told Fox host Sean Hannity. He hasn’t walked back his own comments on the whole country being garbage.
President Joe Biden then said Trump supporters were “garbage”, though then clarified he specifically meant Hinchliffe, the comedian, and that a critical apostrophe should be added: that Trump supporter is garbage, not the lot of them. Kamala Harris also said she disagrees with calling Trump supporters names, focusing instead on the former president himself in her comments.
Sensing an opportunity for a campaign stunt akin to manning the fryer at McDonald’s, Trump donned an orange vest and jumped into a Trump-branded garbage truck for a brief ride, then wore the vest throughout a speech, joking that the outfit made him look thinner.
“Joe Biden’s comments were the direct result of Kamala’s decision to portray everyone who isn’t voting for her as evil and sub-human,” Trump said. “And we know it’s what they believe because look how they’ve treated you, like garbage.”
Since then, he has called Kamala Harris a “low-IQ individual” and a “sleaze bag” and claimed she is “dumb as a rock”. He called Biden a “stupid bastard”. At a later rally, with some supporters on stage behind him in bright construction vests, Trump again brought up the “garbage” comment and said his supporters were “far higher quality” than Harris’ or Biden’s.
Yet, in Trump’s words, he is simultaneously “running a campaign of positive solutions” while Harris is “running a campaign of hate.”
Trump, talking to rightwing media personality Tucker Carlson on Thursday, explicitly laid out how one of his political opponents, former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, was a radical war hawk and should face rifles herself to see the consequences of US involvement in conflict abroad.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” he said.
Cheney said the comments were indicative of how dictators destroy free countries. “They threaten those who speak against them with death,” Cheney said. “We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
It’s exactly the line of attack on Trump that Trump has twisted to say his opponents are using harsh language and calling him extreme names.
“For the past nine years, Kamala and her party have called us racists, bigots, fascists, deplorable, irredeemables, and they call me Hitler … They’ve taken your money, they’ve thrown open our borders to criminals … They’ve sent our blood and treasure to fight in stupid foreign wars – This Tuesday is your chance to stand up and declare you are not going to take it anymore – VOTE!” he posted on Truth Social this week.
Trump has also continued to claim the Democrats are a threat to democracy, a strategy he picked up this year as he faced a barrage of criminal charges related to his actions to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He has said these charges are the work of the Biden administration to hobble their political opponent during an election year, calling it “election interference”.
This line of thinking is now a feature of his speeches, and his allies and supporters now often parrot it – that a vote for Trump is a vote to secure democracy. Despite these proclamations in his speeches, he is expected to declare victory whether he wins or not, and he and his allies are laying groundwork to challenge election results. He has called his political opponents the “enemy within” and threatened to prosecute them or use military force against them for nonspecific crimes, which has led even some of his former staffers to say he is a fascist. He and his allies have instead said comments about the existential threat Trump poses have led to assassination attempts against him.
