Let’s Be Honest, Trump’s Running As a Fascist
A comprehensive look at recent speeches and interviews underscores just how dark the rhetoric has gotten.
DONALD TRUMP IS RUNNING THE MOST openly fascist campaign ever undertaken by a major-party nominee for president of the United States.
That’s not hype; it’s a textbook application of the term. In 2021, Trump used violence to try to overturn an election; in 2022, he called for terminating the Constitution. Now, on the brink of returning to power, Trump is reaffirming his intent to take America deeper into autocracy.
Here are some of the threats and declarations he has issued in the past three months.
1. He says he’s legally immune to all current charges against him.
Four grand juries have indicted Trump on felony charges, and one jury has convicted him. But on August 15, Trump boasted that “the Supreme Court ruled recently on immunity, and I’m immune from all of the stuff that they charge me with.”
2. He claims the right to do whatever he wants as president.
On August 21, Trump asserted (falsely) that the criminal case against him for obstructing recovery of classified documents was invalid because “I had the Presidential Records Act. I had a right to do whatever I wanted to do.”
3. He advocates “one really violent day” of police action.
On September 29, Trump called for police violence against people who appear to be stealing from drug stores or department stores. He proposed an “extraordinarily rough” response: “One real rough, nasty day, with the drugstores as an example,” in which police would take on people who “start walking out with” merchandise. “If you had one really violent day,” said Trump, “one rough hour, and I mean real rough—the word will get out, and it will end immediately.”
4. He vows to indemnify police against “any prosecutions” for doing what he wants.
On October 11, Trump pledged to “indemnify” police officers against any prosecutions” for actions undertaken as part of his planned mass deportations. The next day, he added that when officers confront people walking out of department stores with what appear to be stolen goods, “we’re going to indemnify them against any problems they have.”
5. He threatens to use the military against “the enemy within.”
Trump says the New York Times, the Washington Post, “the press” generally, and Democratic politicians such as Rep. Adam Schiff are part of the “enemy from within” America.
On October 10, in a Fox News interview, Maria Bartiromo asked Trump whether criminals or terrorists from abroad might pose a threat to the United States on Election Day. Trump told her that “the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” not foreigners. “We have some sick people, radical-left lunatics,” said Trump. “And it should be very easily handled by—if necessary—by National Guard. Or, if really necessary, by the military.”
Later in the interview, Trump made it clear that the “lunatics” he was talking about included Democratic politicians. Bartiromo asked Trump how, as president, he would “guard against the bureaucrats undermining you.” Trump replied that “the enemy from within,” including “lunatics that we have inside like Adam Schiff,” was “more dangerous than China [or] Russia.”
Last Wednesday, another Fox News host, Harris Faulkner, invited Trump to clarify his meaning. He responded by adding former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the list. “It is the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous. They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick,” said Trump. “The Pelosis, these people—they’re so sick, and they’re so evil.”
6. He says some of his political opponents shouldn’t be allowed to run for office.
On August 23, Trump said that Ruben Gallego, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Arizona, “shouldn’t be allowed to even run in this election.” On September 27, he added, “Anybody that wants to defund the police is not qualified and shouldn’t be allowed to even run for president.” On September 28, he declared that due to Kamala Harris’s border policies, “she shouldn’t even be allowed to run.”
7. He says he could have jailed Hillary Clinton.
On August 8, Trump boasted, “With Hillary Clinton, I could have done things to her that would have made your head spin.” On August 15, he said he could have jailed Clinton “very easily.” On August 21, he repeated, “I could have put her in jail.”
In an interview that aired on September 3, podcaster Lex Fridman asked Trump about the temptations of the presidency. “If you become leader again, you'll have unprecedented power,” said Fridman. “What does that power do to you? Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world?”
Trump responded by bragging that he could have jailed Clinton but had spared her. “I could have done a big number on Hillary Clinton,” he said. “She’s so lucky I didn’t do anything. She’s so lucky. . . . I could have done something very bad.”
8. He has called for jailing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
On August 17, Trump said Schumer “should have been put in jail, or certainly spoken to very strongly,” for warning Supreme Court justices that if they overturned Roe v. Wade, “You won’t know what hit you.” On September 23, Trump repeated his jail threat, this time skipping the alternative of a verbal rebuke. “These people should be put in jail, the way they talk about our judges and our justices, trying to get them to sway their vote,” said Trump.
9. He has accused Harris of murder.
On October 1, Trump told a crowd in Wisconsin that because Harris was vice president when two American women died—ostensibly at the hands of illegal immigrants—“She murdered them. In my opinion, Kamala murdered them . . . just like she had a gun in her hand.”
10. He vows to prosecute anyone who, in his view, has “cheated” in an election.
Trump insists, falsely, that his opponents stole the 2020 election. He defines cheating broadly, to include almost anything that tilted an election against him. On September 23, he implied that he would target Democrats, technology companies, and former U.S. intelligence officials for having warned in 2020 that the Hunter Biden laptop story might be a foreign disinformation operation:
You see all the stuff that Google and Facebook and all, what they got caught cheating on the last election, the bad things they did, the 51 [intelligence] agents. . . . We’re going to go after anybody that gets caught cheating on the election. We’re going to go after them harder than anyone’s ever been sought before, because these people are really a threat. They are a threat to democracy. The Democrats are a threat to democracy.
On September 28, Trump went further: “If we win and when we win, we’re going to prosecute people that cheat on this election. And if we can, we’ll go back to the last [election] too, if we’re allowed. But we’re going to prosecute people.”
11. He threatens to strip TV networks of their broadcast licenses for offending him.
On September 11, Trump claimed that ABC had treated him unfairly in his debate with Harris, and therefore the government “ought to take away their license.” On October 10, he denounced ABC again and added that “CBS should lose their license” for the way 60 Minutes had edited an interview with Harris. He said the editing by CBS was “probably a criminal act.” The next day, Trump repeated that government officials “have to take their license away.” He has continued to issue this demand in posts on his social media site, Truth Social.
12. He said Fox News “shouldn’t be allowed” to broadcast a speech by Harris.
On September 28, Trump raged against Fox News for airing a Harris speech about border security in Arizona. “They shouldn’t be allowed to put it on,” he fumed.
13. He advocates mandatory imprisonment for flag burning, and he rejects court rulings that such a law would be unconstitutional.
On July 27, August 23, and August 26, Trump called for a mandatory one-year jail term for anyone who burns an American flag. He repeatedly dismissed legal analysts who noted that the Supreme Court had struck down such laws as violations of free speech. On August 30, he scoffed: “They said it’s unconstitutional to stop it. Like hell it is, okay? Like hell it is. It’s not unconstitutional.”
14. He advocates one-day trials and executions of people who are charged with selling drugs.
Trump routinely praises China for subjecting accused drug dealers to a “quick trial” (specifically, in “one day”) and an “immediate” death penalty. “If you did that meaningfully, you will in one week stop the drug problem,” Trump proposed on August 30. “Nobody’s going to be selling drugs.” On September 17, he added, “If you don’t have the death penalty for drug dealers, you’re just wasting your time.”
“They even send the bullet to the family, and they make them pay for the bullet,” he marveled on October 10, speaking of China’s system in a tone of brutal admiration. “It’s vicious, but they have no drug problem.”
15. He advocates the death penalty for persistent illegal immigration.
A week ago, Trump pledged to expel migrant criminals—he didn’t explain how he would identify them—from the United States. “If they come back into our country, it’s an automatic 10 years in jail with no possibility of parole,” he said. “And if that doesn’t work, it’ll be 20 years. And if that doesn’t work, I guess it’s going to be the death penalty, right? The death penalty.”
16. He openly abuses antiquated draconian laws.
On August 26, Trump bragged that he had found an old law that he could use to impose long jail terms on protesters who deface monuments. “I found there was a bill from the early 1900s,” he said. “We don’t do bills like that anymore. [It] said if you touch government property—statues, monuments of any kind—you will serve 10 years with no probation, no early getting out.” Trump said the bill “was dusty. Nobody used it, because we wouldn’t do that, because we’ve become very soft.”
Trump understood that by digging up this old law, he could avoid the need to consult Congress. “You couldn’t get a thing like that passed today,” he lamented on September 19.
Then, on October 11, Trump announced that he would use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expedite a roundup and deportation of migrant criminals. Two days later, he noted that, as with the law about defacing monuments, “you couldn’t pass something like that today.” And a day after that, he crowed that the act “gives the president tremendous power to do what has to be done to secure our country.”
17. He speaks approvingly of violence against his detractors.
A week ago, after a protester tried to interrupt a Trump rally in California, Trump assured the crowd that the protester would go “back home to Mommy.” He described with pleasure the punishment that might ensue: “She gets the hell knocked out of her. Her mother’s a big fan of ours. You know that, right? Her father, her mother.”
18. He calls the January 6th insurrectionists “hostages” and says he’ll pardon many of them.
Trump routinely claims that people who were detained, convicted, or sentenced to jail for their roles in the January 6th insurrection are “hostages” of a corrupt government. On September 25, he complained that the FBI had opened the apps of “the J6 hostages” but had failed to do the same to his would-be assassins. On September 7, he denounced the House January 6th Committee and vowed: “The moment we win, we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime. And I will sign their pardons on Day One.”
THE AGENDA TRUMP IS PRESENTING in these interviews and rallies—political violence, suspension of the Constitution, suspension of civil liberties, unchecked presidential power, censorship of the media, imprisonment of opposition leaders, execution of people for nonviolent crimes, and legal immunity for the president and his thugs—isn’t just close to fascism. It is fascism. It’s what fascists have advocated and practiced in other countries.
We like to think that fascism can’t happen in America. But it’s happening right now. A president who tried to impose elements of fascism in his first term—and who then deployed mob violence in an attempt to stay in power—is seeking a mandate to go much further. And half of the electorate is on the brink of giving him that mandate.