Donald Trump has run out of cards to play in the midterm elections, which is why he is now talking about the “communist menace.” He cannot talk about the economy because prices continue to rise faster than wages, meaning most Americans are getting poorer. He cannot talk about foreign policy because his war in Iran has been a debacle, his tariffs an utter failure, and he has not settled the war in Ukraine on “day one.” He cannot talk about immigration because his raids and mass deportations have become so unpopular.
Trump's Mount Rushmore Speech
Trump kicked off America’s 250th anniversary celebrations on Friday with a speech at Mount Rushmore extolling American culture and warning of a resurgence of the “communist menace.” With the granite faces of four predecessors behind him, Trump took aim at what he called “radicals” and “extremists.” “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both,” he said.
Historical Parallels to McCarthyism
Communism was the scare word used after the first and second world wars to crack the whip on the left. It provoked witch-hunts and ruined careers. It made the former Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy a one-man bomb squad in the early 1950s, when he forced American citizens to “name names” and ridiculed the “pitiful squealing” of “those egg-sucking phony liberals” who “would hold sacrosanct those communists and queers.” McCarthyism was a by-product of the Republican party’s postwar effort to eradicate the New Deal. The party had portrayed the midterm election of 1946 as a “battle between Republicanism and communism,” and the Republican National Committee chairperson claimed that the federal bureaucracy was filled with “pink puppets.”
Trump's Personal History with Red-Baiting
It is likely that Trump’s earliest political memories are of Joe McCarthy’s red scare. Trump and Robert Reich are the same age, and those are among Reich’s earliest memories. On 9 June 1954, Reich sat at his father’s side watching the Army-McCarthy hearings. McCarthy had accused the US army of having poor security at a top-secret facility, hinting at communist subversion. He charged that one of the young attorneys on the staff of Joseph Welch, who was representing the army, was a communist. As McCarthy continued his attack, Welch broke in: “Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” Welch demanded that McCarthy listen to him: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?” Almost overnight, McCarthy imploded. Three years later, censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy drank himself to death at the age of 48.
Roy Cohn's Influence on Trump
During those hearings, McCarthy’s chief counsel was Roy Cohn, who had gained prominence as the Department of Justice attorney who successfully prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage, leading to their executions in 1953. After McCarthy’s downfall, Cohn reinvented himself as a power broker in New York, eventually becoming Trump’s mentor. So of course Trump would reach for the communist scare card when he has almost no other cards left to play.
Young Democrats and Public Opinion
The problem for Trump is that the stars of the Democratic party whom Trump wants to defile have nothing whatsoever to do with communism. They barely have anything to do with socialism. Zohran Mamdani, AOC, Seattle’s Katie Wilson, Colorado’s Melat Kiros, and dozens of others are popular because they are taking on corporate America, attacking political corruption by big money, and dealing with the real problems of ordinary Americans. Labels are becoming irrelevant, anyway. In an Axios-Generation Lab poll of young Americans, 67% say they have a positive or neutral association with the word “socialism” compared with 40% who are positive or neutral toward “capitalism.” A new national survey from the Cato Institute finds Zoomers more supportive of socialism (53%) than capitalism (45%).
Gen Z's Disillusionment with Capitalism
Gen Z’s growing disillusionment with capitalism is understandable. They cannot afford a home of their own. They struggle to afford health insurance. The job market is horrendous. They cannot afford to start a family. In many ways, capitalism has failed them. And they are the future of America. So Trump’s new red-baiting is unlikely to help Republicans in the midterms. To the extent Americans are thinking about the American system as a whole, they seem more concerned about Trump’s neofascism than about socialism or communism. That same Cato poll finds 56% of Americans worried that the US could stop being a free country within the next 50 years because of corruption and abuses of power at the highest reaches of government.
Trump himself has no ideology. He does not care about capitalism, and he is not worried about communism or socialism. His only firm belief is in narcissism, of the especially malignant sort.
