Trump turns to the politics of fear as GOP hopes darken

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It’s getting ugly out there.

The worse GOP midterm prospects look, the darker the rhetoric from top Republicans becomes as they single out Democratic candidates as weird, threatening and antithetical to what it means to be and look like an American.

President Donald Trump is mocking the name of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and slandering him as a “ jihadist .”

Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday made a joke that implied James Talarico is gay . Trump keeps claiming the Democratic Senate nominee is a vegan who is incompatible with the carnivorous Lone Star State. Talarico is now often seen pictured with a plate of meat.

The president has also revived his searing racially derogatory rhetoric suggesting that Haitians and Africans are invading key election states like Ohio.

And after federal officials searched the home of Somali-born Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar on Monday, he underscored concerns he’s using executive power to target a political foe by questioning whether she had constitutional rights as a naturalized citizen “from one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet.”

Trump’s rhetoric is hardly a surprise, given the linguistic excesses of his presidential campaigns, yet it’s still jarring to see such overt racial language delivered from behind a presidential podium.

Some insults are delivered with a smile, which may offer Trump and Vance a modicum of political cover and the chance to argue it’s all part of the rough-and-tumble of the campaign trail in a polarized age. But that hardly makes maligning someone’s race, faith, personal appearance and manner more acceptable, nor does it absolve an intellectually low form of politics.

Trump has been accused of prejudice for years — especially over inflammatory social media posts and fake and racist conspiracies he pushed over former president Barack Obama’s birthplace. The president, in seeking to appeal to voters, has often implied some minority political rivals are incompatible with traditional American culture and values. His anti-immigrant rhetoric seems at least partially aimed at his most conservative base voters who the GOP needs to turn out in huge numbers to stave off a midterm election disaster.

The most obvious explanation for this ominous turn in the campaign, beyond Trump’s propensity for such dark arts, is that the Republicans lack a better story to tell. Trump’s approval rating is at 33% in the latest CNN poll of polls — a daunting number for an incumbent president three weeks from a midterm election. Polls show majorities of Americans blame the president’s decisions for worsening their struggle to cope with the high costs of food, housing, gasoline and diesel. And the rush by Vance and Trump to red states where Republicans never thought they’d be fighting in the campaign’s final stretch tells its own story.

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Branding Talarico as a “freak,” as Vance did in Texas on Tuesday, seems an attempt to distract from the struggling and scandal-plagued GOP Senate candidate — Attorney General Ken Paxton , who was Trump’s personal pick for the seat.

It’s politics 101 for party leaders to seek to disqualify rivals whom they can’t beat on the issues. Trump’s singling out of Muslim candidates parallels his conceit that Democrats are “socialists” and “communists.” And if he can malign El-Sayed and Talarico, he’ll be doing his party a service. The pair are locked in races expected to go down to the wire on November 3.

Trump is going harshly negative on El-Sayed, the former executive director of the Detroit Health Department. “I call him Mohammed,” Trump said in Tennessee on Saturday. “Somebody said, ‘His name isn’t Mohammed’ I’m the president, I can call him whatever the hell I want.” On Monday night in Ohio, he added: “He’s a jihadist.”

It is of course legitimate for Republicans to highlight and attack El-Sayed’s record. They want to draw attention to his claim that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza shortly after the October 7 attacks . Many American Jews — Democratic voters among them — balk at the term, even while mourning the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in the Israel-Hamas war following the terror attacks that killed more than 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, in 2023.

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But calling El-Sayed a “jihadist” — namely a radicalized terrorist who rejects democracy, suggesting he’s aligned with groups like Al-Qaeda or ISIS — crosses a rubicon. It’s obviously intended to frighten voters into thinking that the Democratic candidate is a terrorist and security threat. And calling El-Sayed “Mohammed” demeans him and insults the humanity and individuality of all Muslims.

More broadly, the president seems to be portraying the Michigan-born Democrat and anyone who shares his faith as un-American and unworthy of the political rights of every citizen. His tactics recall his still-incessant use of Obama’s middle name, Hussein.

El-Sayed responded to Trump’s deliberate mangling of his name by arguing the president’s focus insults the intelligence of voters. “He knows my name is Abdul. He says it everyday,” El-Sayed wrote on X . “But he’s not just attacking me. He’s attacking all of us. He thinks so low of us. He thinks he can use my name and my faith to distract us from the suffering his policies are inflicting on us at the pump, at the grocery store, and at the doctor’s office.”

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The president’s rhetoric toward Omar, with whom he’s furiously sparred for years, has similar apparent goals. He implies that the Minnesota representative is importing what he depicts as the anarchy of Somalia to Minnesota. “She’s a disaster. She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military, without — all they do is shoot each other,” he said in Ohio on Monday. “They come into the United States of America and they tell us how to run our country. We’re not going to stand for it. They drive up taxes. They drive up healthcare costs, insurance costs, childcare costs.”

Minnesota welcomed tens of thousands of Somalis in the early 1990s when their East African country collapsed into violence. The administration claims the community is laced with violent criminals and widespread fraud centered in day care centers. Somali leaders say violent criminals are a tiny minority, and that Trump and Republicans are maligning them without justification .

The Department of Justice said it carried out an enforcement operation at the home of Omar, who is running for reelection. It is not yet possible to independently verify any evidence or accusations against her. Omar responded that Trump had smeared her for years and was now targeting her as a political enemy.

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Trump’s aides repeatedly deny that he is racist or guilty of racist rhetoric, pointing out that he holds events to mark milestones like Black History Month and that he increased his support among minority voters in the 2024 election. In February , then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed “radical Democrats throughout the years who have accused this president falsely of being a racist.”

Many Republican voters also claim double standards, pointing out that Democrats often speak in demeaning terms about conservatives and Trump’s voters more generally — including those who adopted Hillary Clinton’s phrase that half of them were in a “basket of deplorables” as a perverse badge of honor. Some senior Democrats have openly charged that Trump is a fascist.

But Trump and Vance are also intensifying a trend that animates the newly populist Republican Party: a tendency to make specific judgments about who can be considered an authentic American.

In the 2008 campaign, GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin argued that “real America” was defined by small-town patriots and hard workers who lived in “pro-America areas of this great nation” — implying that those outside the heartland lacked legitimacy and pride in the country.

Those remarks seem tame by comparison to the vitriol that Trump ushered in, and her subsequent apology now looks like a historical curiosity.

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外面的情况越来越糟糕了。

共和党中期选举前景越糟糕，共和党高层的言论就越阴暗，他们将民主党候选人描绘成怪异、具有威胁性，并且与美国人的身份和形象背道而驰。

唐纳德·特朗普总统嘲笑密歇根州民主党参议员候选人阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德的名字，并诽谤他是“圣战分子”。

周二，副总统万斯开了一个玩笑，暗示詹姆斯·塔拉里科是同性恋。特朗普一直声称这位民主党参议员候选人是素食主义者，与肉食之州德克萨斯州格格不入。而塔拉里科现在经常被拍到手捧一盘肉。

总统还重拾了他那尖锐的种族歧视言论，暗示海地人和非洲人正在入侵俄亥俄州等关键选举州。

周一，联邦官员搜查了出生于索马里的明尼苏达州众议员伊尔汗·奥马尔的住所后，他质疑奥马尔作为一名来自“地球上最糟糕的国家之一”的归化公民是否享有宪法权利，这加剧了人们对他滥用行政权力打击政治对手的担忧。

考虑到特朗普总统竞选期间的语言过度，他的言论并不令人惊讶，但看到如此露骨的种族主义言论从总统讲台上发表，仍然令人震惊。

有些侮辱带着微笑说出，这或许能为特朗普和万斯提供些许政治掩护，让他们有机会辩称，在两极分化的时代，这一切都是竞选过程中不可避免的摩擦。但这并不能使诋毁他人的种族、信仰、外貌和举止变得更容易被接受，也不能为这种低劣的政治手段开脱。

多年来，特朗普一直被指责带有偏见，尤其是在社交媒体上发表煽动性言论，以及散布关于前总统奥巴马出生地的虚假种族主义阴谋论。为了争取选民支持，特朗普经常暗示一些少数族裔政治对手与美国传统文化和价值观格格不入。他的反移民言论似乎至少部分是为了迎合其最保守的选民群体，共和党需要这些选民踊跃投票，以避免中期选举惨败。

除了特朗普惯用这种阴险伎俩之外，竞选形势出现这种不祥转折最显而易见的解释是，共和党人实在想不出更好的故事可讲。在CNN最新的民调汇总中，特朗普的支持率仅为33%，对于一位距离中期选举仅剩三周的现任总统来说，这是一个令人担忧的数字。民调显示，大多数美国民众将食品、住房、汽油和柴油价格高企加剧民众生活困境的责任归咎于总统的决策。而万斯和特朗普急于在共和党人从未想过会在竞选最后阶段与之抗衡的“红色州”展开攻势，也说明了问题所在。

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像万斯周二在德克萨斯州所做的那样，将塔拉里科称为“怪胎”，似乎是为了转移人们对处境艰难且丑闻缠身的共和党参议员候选人——司法部长肯·帕克斯顿的注意力，帕克斯顿是特朗普亲自挑选的该席位候选人。

对于政党领袖来说，试图取消那些在政策上无法战胜的竞争对手的参选资格，是政治的基本套路。特朗普单独攻击穆斯林候选人，这与他自以为是地认为民主党人都是“社会主义者”和“共产主义者”如出一辙。如果他能抹黑埃尔-赛义德和塔拉里科，那对他的党派来说无疑是件好事。这两人的选情胶着，预计11月3日将决出胜负。

特朗普对底特律卫生局前执行主任埃尔-赛义德进行了猛烈抨击。“我叫他穆罕默德，”特朗普周六在田纳西州说。“有人说，‘他的名字不是穆罕默德’。我是总统，我想怎么叫他就怎么叫。”周一晚上在俄亥俄州，他又补充道：“他是个圣战分子。”

共和党人当然有权强调并攻击埃尔-赛义德的过往记录。他们想借此引起人们对他声称以色列在10月7日袭击事件后不久就在加沙实施种族灭绝的关注。许多美国犹太人——包括一些民主党选民——对这种说法感到反感，即便他们正为在以色列与哈马斯战争中丧生的数万巴勒斯坦人哀悼，以及2023年造成1200多人死亡（其中大部分是以色列人）的恐怖袭击事件。

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但称埃尔-赛义德为“圣战分子”——即一个拒绝民主的激进恐怖分子，暗示他与基地组织或伊斯兰国等组织有关联——则越过了底线。这显然意在恐吓选民，让他们认为这位民主党候选人是恐怖分子，对安全构成威胁。而称埃尔-赛义德为“穆罕默德”则是对他的一种贬低，是对所有穆斯林的人性和个性的侮辱。

更广泛地说，总统似乎在将这位出生于密歇根州的民主党人以及所有与他信仰相同的人描绘成非美国人，不配享有公民的政治权利。他的这种做法让人想起他至今仍在不断提及奥巴马的中间名“侯赛因”。

针对特朗普故意念错他的名字，埃尔-赛义德回应说，总统的这种做法侮辱了选民的智商。“他知道我的名字是阿卜杜勒。他每天都这么说，”埃尔-赛义德在X网站上写道。“但他攻击的不仅仅是我。他是在攻击我们所有人。他如此轻视我们。他以为可以利用我的名字和我的信仰来转移我们的注意力，让我们忽略他的政策在加油站、超市和诊所给我们带来的痛苦。”

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总统对奥马尔的言论，与他多年来一直激烈交锋，其目的显然类似。他暗示这位明尼苏达州众议员正在把索马里的无政府状态带到明尼苏达州。“她简直是个灾难。她来自一个没有法律、没有警察、没有军队的国家，他们只会互相残杀，”他周一在俄亥俄州说道。“他们来到美利坚合众国，却告诉我们该如何治理国家。我们绝不会容忍。他们推高税收，推高医疗保健、保险和托儿费用。”

上世纪90年代初，索马里东非国家陷入战乱，明尼苏达州接纳了数万名索马里人。美国政府声称，索马里社区充斥着暴力犯罪分子，托儿所诈骗猖獗。索马里领导人则表示，暴力犯罪分子只占极少数，特朗普和共和党人对他们的诋毁毫无根据。

美国司法部表示，已对正在竞选连任的奥马尔的住所进行了执法行动。目前尚无法独立核实针对她的任何证据或指控。奥马尔回应称，特朗普多年来一直抹黑她，现在又将她视为政治敌人。

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特朗普的助手们一再否认他是种族主义者或发表过种族主义言论，并指出他会举办活动来纪念诸如“黑人历史月”之类的重要时刻，而且他在2024年大选中获得了更多少数族裔选民的支持。今年2月，时任白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特抨击了“多年来一直错误地指责这位总统是种族主义者的激进民主党人”。

许多共和党选民也指责民主党存在双重标准，他们指出，民主党人经常用贬损的言辞谈论保守派人士以及特朗普的支持者——包括那些将希拉里·克林顿所说的“一群可悲之人”奉为圭臬的人。一些资深民主党人甚至公开指责特朗普是法西斯分子。

但特朗普和万斯也加剧了新民粹主义共和党的一个趋势：即对谁可以被认为是真正的美国人做出具体判断。

在 2008 年的竞选活动中，共和党副总统候选人萨拉·佩林认为，“真正的美国”是由居住在“这个伟大国家的亲美地区”的小镇爱国者和辛勤工作的人们定义的——暗示那些生活在中心地带以外的人缺乏对国家的合法性和自豪感。

与特朗普引发的激烈言辞相比，这些言论似乎显得温和了许多，而她随后的道歉现在看来也成了一段历史趣闻。