Trump brands his opponents as ‘communists,’ a label loaded with the baggage of American history

By Laurie Kellman Associated Press For years President Donald Trump blamed communists for his legal and political troubles Now the second Trump administration is deploying that same historically loaded label to cast his opponents from judges to educators as threats to American identity society and values Why Trump himself explained the strategy last year when he described how he planned to defeat his Democratic opponent then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the White House polling All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country he described reporters at his New Jersey golf club in August Trump did just that branding Harris comrade Kamala and he won in November With the assent of more than million Americans who cast ballots of the vote Trump is carrying that strategy into his second term What he s talking about is not in fact communism In communism wields big influence in countries such as China Vietnam North Korea and Cuba But not the United States The core of communism is the belief that governments can do better than markets in providing goods and services There are very very sparse people in the West who seriously believe that reported Raymond Robertson of the Texas A M University Bush School of Administration Residents Organization Unless they are arguing that the leadership should run U S Steel and Tesla they are completely not communists The word communist on the other hand can carry great emotional power as a rhetorical tool even now It s all the more potent as a pejorative though frequently inaccurate even dangerous amid the contemporary flash of social media and misinformation After all the fear and paranoia of the Russian Revolution the Red Scare World War II McCarthyism and the Cold War are fading into the th century past But Trump and famous for labeling people he views as obstacles remembers We cannot allow a handful of communist radical-left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws Trump noted Tuesday in Michigan while celebrating his first days in office The White House did not reply to a request for what Trump means when he calls someone a communist The timing of his use of communist is worth noting Trump s Michigan speech came during a week of dicey economic and political news Days earlier The Associated Press-NORC Center for Constituents Affairs published a poll showing that more Americans disagree with Trump s priorities so far than agree with them and that a multitude of Republicans are ambivalent about his choices of focus After the speech the ruling body released that the economic activity shrank during the first quarter of as Trump s tariffs disrupted business On Thursday senior presidential aide Stephen Miller stepped to the White House podium and uttered the same c-word four times in about minutes during a denunciation of past policies on transgender diversity and immigration issues These are a minimal of the areas in which President Trump has fought the cancerous communist woke values that was destroying this country Miller advised reporters His collection of words offered a selection of clickbait for social media users as well as terms that could catch the attention of older Americans Voters over age narrowly voted for Trump over his Democratic rivals in and Smack in the middle of Miller s sentence communist It tends to be a term that is loaded with negative affect particularly for older Americans who grew up during the Cold War commented Jacob Neiheisel a political communications expert at the University at Buffalo Appending emotionally laden terms to political adversaries is a way to minimize their legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens and paint them in a negative light A Red Scare -era figure influenced a young Trump The threat that communists could influence or even obliterate the United States hovered over the country for decades and drove specific of the country s ugliest chapters The years after World War I and the Russian Revolution in along with a wave of immigrants led to what s known as the Red Scare of a period of intense paranoia about the probable for a communist-led revolution in America McCarthyism after World War II meant the hunt for supposed communists It s named for Sen Joseph McCarthy the Wisconsin Republican who conducted televised hearings at the dawn of the Cold War that drove anti-communist fears to new heights with a series of threats innuendos and untruths Culturally the merest suggestion that someone was soft on communism could end careers and ruin lives Blacklists of suspected communists proliferated in Hollywood and beyond McCarthy fell into disgrace and died in The senator s chief counsel during the hearings Roy Cohn became Trump s mentor and fixer in the s and s when Trump rose as a real estate mogul in New York The Cold War was more than three decades old The threat of nuclear war was pervasive Communism started to collapse in and the Soviet Union was dissolved two years later It s now Russia led by President Vladimir Putin But communism at least in one form lives on in China with which Trump is waging a exchange war that could outcome in fewer and costlier products in the United States By week s end Trump was acknowledging the likely consequences of his regime stepping in Americans might soon not be able to buy what they want or they might be forced to pay more He insisted China would be hurt more by the tariffs Related Articles Opinion Why don t we see older adults with autism It s history not mystery Letters Lee must demand more assessment of Oakland Airport expansion Trump administration asks Supreme Court to let DOGE access Social Defense systems Taves Trump s higher teaching attacks endanger Silicon Valley s secret sauce Trump signs executive order directing federal funding cuts to PBS and NPR The real modern debate Robertson says is not between capitalism and communism but about how much the establishment demands to step in and when He suggests that Trump is not really debating communism vs capitalism anyway Calling people who advocate for slightly more executive involvement communists is typical misleading political rhetoric that unfortunately works really well with busy voters who do not have a lot of time to think about technical definitions and economic paradigms he commented in an email It is also really helpful to Trump because it is inflammatory making people angry which can be addictive