In Donald Trump's first address as leader of this country, he painted a picture of an ailing nation: people "trapped in poverty," aged factories "scattered like tombstones" across the landscape, and criminals and drugs robbing "our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now," Trump pledged on January 20, 2017, amid the darkest rendering of America's promise any president in living memory had ever given.
Fast forward to the first midterm referendum on Trump's tenure. The Washington Post writes:
President Trump has settled on a strategy of fear — laced with falsehoods and racially tinged rhetoric — to help lift his party to victory in the coming midterms, part of a broader effort to energize Republican voters with two weeks left until the Nov. 6 elections. [...]
The overall strategy, Trump advisers and political operatives said, is to paint a portrait of a chaotic, dangerous world — with Trump and Republicans as the panacea.
Trump and his top aides deliberately decided not to run on any of his policy initiatives. Instead, they chose apocalyptic carnage.
In Mississippi, Trump said people who opposed Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination and supported his accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford were intent on destruction. "They want to destroy people. These are really evil people,” he said on October 2, after mocking Dr. Ford for not recalling every detail of her assault.
Then Trump began portraying Democrats as arsonists. "You don't hand matches to an arsonist, and you don't give power to an angry left wing mob—and that's what they've become," he told Kansans on October 6.
In Council Bluffs, Iowa, on October 9, Trump offered, "The Democrats have become too extreme, and they’ve become, frankly, too dangerous to govern."
Democrats weren't his political opponents anymore, they were enemies of the republic—an existential threat to the nation. This is the campaign Trump and his fellow Republicans chose to prosecute. This week, the carnage he has been pulling for landed on the doorsteps of his most high-profile enemies—the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bidens, George Soros, CNN, and former CIA Director John Brennan, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Maxine Waters of California, and Robert De Niro.
Just imagine what Trump and his supporters will do if Republicans retain unilateral control of the government in two weeks.
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