President Trump and the White House are ratcheting up the rhetoric in attacking Democrats, leaning into mockery and incendiary language to demean their political rivals.
The trend was particularly notable as President Trump, many of his aids and Republicans in Congress verbally attacked those marching in the weekend’s “No Kings” demonstrations against the administration.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday doubled down on her claim that Democrats’ “main constituency” is made up of terrorists, criminals and those in the country illegally, comments that were reminiscent of Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, saying at the time that many Trump supporters could be put in a “basket of deplorables.”
Trump over the weekend posted an AI-generated video depicting him flying a plane that dropped excrement on demonstrators.
To further mock the No Kings rallies, Trump and his team posted various memes of the president as a king, while Trump late Sunday said the rallies are “not representative of this country” and dismissed those protesting as “whacked out.”
“By the way, I’m not a king,” Trump said. “I’m not a king. I work my ass off to make our country great. That’s all it is. I’m not a king at all.”
The verbal broadsides were reflective of what could be a few second-term mottoes for Trump World: Always be on offense, and hit your opponent harder than they hit you.
Team Trump in his second term is constantly on the attack, never backing down at any hint of criticism. They appear to believe that any backlash they get for their own attacks on their opponents will simply drive more attention to Trump’s message, benefiting the White House.
“The president uses social media to make a point,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who described No Kings demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies ahead of Saturday, said Monday when asked about Trump’s excrement video.
“You can argue he’s probably the most effective person who has ever used social media for that. He is using satire to make a point. He is not calling for the murder of his political opponents.”
One White House official told The Hill that the administration is able to “walk and chew gum at a very, very high level,” arguing the president and his team can simultaneously drive a message and box in Democrats with their attacks.
Trump allies are likewise confident they won’t face any political backlash at a time when the nation is already polarized and many Americans are desensitized to the president’s brash and often crude brand of politics.
But some Republicans, who asked to speak anonymously to offer criticisms of Trump’s team, argued the approach was not without risk.
“Even if that’s what he truly believes, he shouldn’t have voiced it in such a way,” one Republican operative said. “You’re casting everyone in the same light and that hurts us with independent voters who are put off by that kind of rhetoric.”
Republican strategist Doug Heye, who does not support Trump, called the comments “tasteless and unpresidential.”
At the same time, Heye added that the comments “ultimately won’t matter politically.”
“Political rhetoric is in the gutter everywhere you look and no one seems to want to act like an adult,” he said.
Trump has for years used inflammatory language to attack his political opponents, referring to them as “scum,” “vermin” and “the enemy within.” And the White House has turned its official social media feeds into a sandbox for memes and AI-generated content meant to anger its opponents.
Trump is sometimes described as the troller in chief, and his attacks on opponents, over the weekend and previously, are very much in tune with the conservative online world.
The verbal broadsides also in many ways have been amplified since the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, though Trump allies blame Democratic rhetoric, including their comparisons of Trump to Hitler, for fueling the political divide and potential violence.
During an event to award Kirk a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, Trump said the far left promoted “the devil’s ideology.”
Leavitt drew backlash last week after she said Democrats were appealing to criminals and those in the country illegally. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called her “sick” and “out of control.”
Leavitt responded by doubling down, claiming Democratic lawmakers “absolutely cater to pro-Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”
“Hakeem Jeffries is an America Last, stone-cold loser,” Leavitt posted on the social platform X. “Now open up the government and stop simping to try to get your radical left-wing base to like you.”
Trump and the White House responded with a mix of anger and nonchalance to the No Kings rallies. Official White House accounts posted memes of Trump dressed as a king, seeking to trigger their opponents. Trump said he was not a king, called the protests a “joke” and posted the excrement video to Truth Social.
Polls show the nation is more divided than ever.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released earlier this month showed that a majority of American voters say the U.S. is too politically divided to solve problems. The survey revealed that 64 percent of registered voters think the country’s divisions preclude solving political problems, while 33 percent said the political system can still address its problems.
The poll reflects a major change from a similar survey performed in September 2020 — toward the end of Trump’s first term — when 42 percent of those polled said the nation was too divided to solve its problems and 51 percent said the nation could still solve its problems.
Some Democrats argue Trump’s hits on the demonstrators will be ineffective because they are inconsistent.
“They’re flailing around for a response and can’t get anything to stick,” said Democratic strategist Eddie Vale. “In just the past week, No Kings protesters have simultaneously been dangerous and violent terrorists, too old, bad dancers, and such a joke that we don’t care about them, we swear, but also spending an inordinate amount of time talking about them while making s—ty AI videos.”
Democratic strategist Joel Payne said Trump’s retort could have simply been that he’s busy being the president. But he said the fact that Republicans consumed a lot of energy on the protests betrayed their fears that their approval is waning.
“I think it suggests an understanding that this thing is going the wrong way on them,” Payne said. “You can easily bat down polling. You can’t push back on millions of people spilling into the streets with a clear message about the negativity around your agenda.”
“The pictures are what they are,” Payne said. “That’s a hard thing to rebut.”
Source: The Hill
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