Former president Donald Trump remains devoted to targeting his messaging to the Republican base in his third campaign by doubling down on language that experts say is both highly partisan and dangerous for U.S. democracy.
In his ninth visit to Pennsylvania and his third to the Pennsylvania Farm Show Arena in Harrisburg this year, Trump said a victory by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris would bring economic disaster and World War Three.
That is the approach Berwood Yost, who runs public opinion polling at Franklin and Marshall College, expected. To reach beyond the base, Yost says the GOP nominee would need to introduce nuance to his messaging and policy positions.
That has not happened.
Instead, Trump is following a similar strategy he used in 2016 and 2020. His apocalyptic remarks about Harris closely mirror those he made during his campaign against HIllary Clinton and now-President Joe Biden.
Dartmouth political science professor Brendan Nyhan says it’s a typical approach, to a certain degree.
He said candidates traditionally emphasize the dangers of electing their opponents and that Trump has shown himself to be a showman who likes to exaggerate.
However, he emphasizes, there is a line.
“When Trump encourages his supporters to see Democrats not just as political opponents but an existential threat to the United States itself, that’s potentially very dangerous,” Nyhan said.
As he has since 2015, Trump used immigration as a political cudgel. But his language has taken on a new tone in recent months.
In November 2023, he first used language echoing Adolf Hitler when describing immigrants. At the time, he said he was unaware that the phrase, “poisoning the blood” harkens back to Hiter’s Mein Kampf, but he has continued to use the phrase.
During his visit to Harrisburg on Wednesday, Trump said immigrants crossing the southern border “have poisoned our country.”
“The language itself is abhorrent. It promotes hate. It echoes some of the worst parts of human history. It’s essentially fascist language,” Nyhan said.
Trump’s regular use of the phrase is part of his larger rhetorical strategy, Nyhan said, calling the former president the most effective American politician at using repetition to break through media coverage to make his messages stick.
Trump again called for the largest deportation in history, which brought cheers from the crowd in central Pennsylvania.
The anti-immigrant messaging is part of a national trend among elected Republicans and on-the-ground organizers pushing the anti-semetic and xenophobic conspiracy theory called the Great Replacement Theory, Nyhan said.
The conspiracy, which mid-state Congressman Scott Perry also supported in a congressional committee meeting in 2021 and again this year, pushes the anti-semitic trope dating back to Nazi Germany. It falsely claims Jewish people are secretly plotting the downfall of the white race. It’s xenophobic because it believes Jewish people are doing so by allowing immigrants to cross the border and “dilute” the whiteness of the United States.
It’s being used to undermine democratic values in a number of ways, according to Nyhan.
Should Trump be elected and follow-through on his deportation plans, it would require a massive mobilization of law enforcement and the military within U.S. borders, Nyhan said. Rounding up millions of people would create destabilizing constitutional questions, as would the support or opposition of different states.
Part of Trump’s conspiracies about immigrants is that they are voting for Democrats. This has been part of his team’s messaging since 2016, when he falsely claimed millions of non-citizens cast ballots. In reality, he lost the popular vote by 2.8 million votes while winning the Electoral College.
Several Republican and party-affiliated groups around the country are trumpeting that lie in an effort to cast doubt about the 2024 elections before they even happen. It’s similar to Trump’s strategy ahead of the 2020 election and his falsehoods about voting by mail.
Trump’s other statements on Wednesday night — which were televised nationally for Sean Hannity’s show on Fox — were consistently about the dangers of electing his political opponents.
For example, he said Harris would end fracking in Pennsylvania, which would cost the state about 500,000 jobs. Though Harris said on the campaign trail in 2019 that she would seek to end fracking, she changed her policy position when she joined the Biden campaign. She told CNN a week ago that she would not ban fracking.
Trump also said he would cut taxes and lower interest rates. To cut taxes, Republicans would need to control both the U.S. House and Senate. Interest rates are controlled by the Federal Reserve, an agency independent from the presidency to ensure U.S. economic decisions are not made for political gain.
His rhetorical style is to create an emotional connection with his audience, said Yost.
Trump’s messaging focuses on fear and loss, which are very strong motivators for people to vote, Yost said, noting it worked in 2016 to drive turnout, then again for both parties in 2020.
It is one of those strategies that will work until it doesn’t, he said.
The only way to know if it works this time around is to wait until the election on November 5th.