During his years as president, Donald Trump regularly called his critics or opponents “enemies of the people.” Consider Thanksgiving Day 2020. The president said of Brad Raffensperger, “He’s an enemy of the people.”
Raffensperger is the secretary of state of Georgia. He had refused to cooperate with Trump in the falsifying of the presidential election, just held. Raffensperger and his wife received a barrage of death and rape threats.
Many people were killed as “enemies of the people” under Stalin, under the Khmer Rouge, etc. Was Trump aware of this history? Aware of the pedigree — the awful, bloody pedigree — of “enemy of the people”?
Today, “America First” is a slogan in our politics — as of yore. The America First movement began in September 1940, a year after the Nazis and the Soviets invaded Poland, thereby starting World War II. As I wrote in an article last year,
America Firsters were a mixture of genuine isolationists and genuine Nazi sympathizers. The notion of “America First” was discredited for decades after. An odor emitted from it.
Then came Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaigns of the 1990s. He revived the concept — the concept and the slogan. Twenty years later, Trump brought back “America First” in a big way. “America First” trips off the Republican tongue.
After Trump’s defeat, alumni of his administration founded the America First Policy Institute. In May 2022, the Heritage Foundation — completely transformed — issued a press release saying, “Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last.”
Even Lindsey Graham has gotten into the act. By America Firsters, he is considered a “globalist,” and worse. But here he is, talking with Sean Hannity on Fox News at the beginning of 2022:
“Can Senator McConnell effectively work with the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump? I am not going to vote for anybody for leader of the Senate, as a Republican, unless they can prove to me that they can advocate an America First agenda and have a working relationship with Donald Trump.”
There you go.
On Veterans’ Day, Trump gave a speech in New Hampshire. It was about two hours long — in the traditional populist style. (This style is most familiar in Latin America. Hugo Chávez, for example, was a master of it.) Trump offered some of his greatest hits. About the dictator of China, he said the following: “He’s like Central Casting. There’s nobody in Hollywood that can play the role of President Xi — the look, the strength, the voice.”
“The strength.” Yes, always “strength” with Trump. (He gave an interview to Playboy in 1990. Interesting. He spoke of Gorbachev and the Soviet Union, and the Chinese Communist Party and the Tiananmen Square Massacre. I wrote about the interview in February 2016, here.) The U.S. State Department has declared the persecution of the Uyghur people by the CCP a genocide.
In his New Hampshire speech, Trump also said, “I’m a very proud election-denier.” Undeniable. He further spoke of “vermin” — “vermin” living in our country that he, as president again, would “root out.”
When Trump spoke of “enemies of the people” and the rest, I always assumed he was ignorant of the past — ignorant of the pedigrees of these words and phrases. But, to be honest, I’m not sure. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t.
For years, people have told me, “Don’t get your panties in a twist. Lighten up, Francis. Trump is a good American democrat, faithful to the Constitution. Sure, his rhetoric is loose now and then, and he’s prone to bravado. He may not have all the learning and the polish of William F. Buckley Jr. He may be a little too impressed by Putin, Xi, Kim, and other less-than-Jeffersonian types. But you don’t want a war, do you? And Trump is an American patriot with the country’s best interests at heart.”
Well, that had better be true, because the Republican Party seems determined to nominate him for president, for a third time. And he may well be president again. And his defenders and ’splainers — well, let’s hope they’re right. A lot rides on it.