Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini

To support The Atlantic’s journalism, please consider subscribing today. Rhetoric has a history. The words democracy and tyranny were debated in ancient Greece; the phrase separation of powers became important in the 17th and 18th centuries. The word vermin, as a political term, dates from the 1930s and ’40s, when both fascists and communists liked to describe their political enemies as vermin, parasites, and blood infections, as well as insects, weeds, dirt, and animals. The term has been revived and reanimated, in an American presidential campaign, with Donald Trump’s description…

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Back in Butler, Trump says, ‘I will never yield — not even in the face of death itself’

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday reinforced his fighter image by rallying supporters in the same place where a gunman came within inches of taking his life, eschewing lingering concerns about his safety and sending a clear message to his supporters that he will never stop fighting for them The Washington Times stories: White House

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Elon Musk Bends the Knee to Donald Trump

Have you ever watched a crowd go wild for a PowerPoint slide? After a few introductory hellos yesterday in Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump gestured to a screen showing the same graph on illegal immigration that he had been talking about when he was nearly assassinated in July and delivered his real opening line: “As I was saying …” The audience loved that. The rallygoers had waited in line for hours in the hot sun to get into the field, and this was their reward. They had made it through warm-up…

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Trump and Vance Are Harming the People They Claim to Care About

Springfield, Ohio, is just the sort of beleaguered heartland manufacturing town that Donald Trump and J. D. Vance say the MAGA movement wants to help. Instead, the Republican ticket has chosen to make life miserable for the town and its residents for the sake of political gain. The thing to remember is not just that Trump and Vance are lying about immigrants eating pets in Springfield. It’s that Vance is happy to admit that they’re lying. He’s done that twice, first in an X post last week and then once…

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Trump Promises a ‘Bloody Story’

Donald Trump says something crazy or vicious almost every time he speaks. It’s his nature, but it’s also a political strategy. The flow of half-demented, half-depraved talk energizes those who enjoy it—and exhausts those who are horrified by it. The mainstream media cannot report every outrageous remark, or they would do nothing else. Even those shocking comments that do get reported tend to  make just a blip. The next day, if not the next minute, Trump is telling another lie or vilifying another public servant or issuing another threat. Yesterday’s…

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