Trump resurrects oldest GOP scare tactic over democratic socialist wins

It was only a matter of time before Donald Trump went full Joe McCarthy. Since the president first entered politics, he’s been using many of the classic Red Scare tactics: enemies lists, purges, denaturalization, expulsions, jailing of political opposition. It’s been done before, here and elsewhere. But it looks like Trump now sees it as his magic key to the midterms.

Republicans have been playing this card for nearly a century now. Throughout the Cold War, they tarred the Democratic Party with the communist label with some success, especially during the early post-war years of the 1940s and 1950s. The investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Army-McCarthy hearings dominated the political discourse for years, with everyone in government and throughout the entertainment industry looking over their shoulders, worrying that their youthful attendance at a left-wing meeting would land them in hot water. In those early days of television, it became the biggest show in the country, and certain people hovering around those who were perpetrating these witch hunts had a lingering, profound effect on the nation’s future. One of them was a lawyer named Roy Cohn.

I wrote about the Cohn-Trump relationship, just after the 2024 election, as it became clear the outlines of Trump’s second term were going to be heavily authoritarian. While he had campaigned with his usual fatuous “I will magically make everything perfect” and “it’s all the immigrants’ and criminals’ fault,” it was clear then that his win had cemented in him a new sense of omnipotence. Having survived the ignominy of his failed coup and criminal indictments to ascend to the halls of power once again, Trump’s promises — to exact vengeance on those who crossed him, and to reward his loyal henchmen — were ones he intended to keep.

Cohn had once been McCarthy’s top deputy. When you watch footage of the Army-McCarthy hearings, he’s sitting there right by McCarthy’s side, whispering in his ear. He no doubt gave him the same advice he passed on to Trump years later: attack, attack, attack, admit nothing, deny everything and always claim victory, never admit defeat. We’ve seen those maxims in action throughout Trump’s career in both business and politics.

Trump was a child during the 1950s, so he almost certainly wasn’t aware of Cohn’s influence on the Red Scare. But as an early baby boomer, he grew up in a time when the nation was steeped in anti-communism. Unlike the majority of his generational cohort, he never rebelled against the establishment that promoted it. I doubt he ever really thought much about it; he just absorbed the language and the attitude, which he has recently found useful to tar his political opponents.

Back in 2023, some members of the GOP, mostly centered in Florida, where anti-communism among the Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants still has salience, threw around the charge, but it didn’t seem to have much juice. During the 2024 campaign, Trump famously promised, “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” He also suggested that socialists are secretly communists who are too cowardly to adopt the name. But until recently he hasn’t leaned heavily on the charge, preferring words like “scum” and “the enemy within.” Over the last couple of weeks, though, he’s made it the centerpiece of his indictment of the Democratic Party.

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In his speech Mt. Rushmore on July 3, Trump said, “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.” Apparently, he’s come up with the clever idea that he can kill two birds with one stone and conflate communism with immigration, riling up the MAGA base to come out and vote in an election for which they’ve shown little enthusiasm thus far.

It’s supposedly predicated on the primary wins of several Democratic House candidates who identify as democratic socialists, in addition to such nemeses as Somalia-born Rep. Ilhan Omar, a progressive Democrat from Minnesota, for whom he has a burning hatred. Trump must also be consumed with jealousy over the popularity and success of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an immigrant and self-professed democratic socialist, who also happens to be young, handsome and charismatic.

But the president may be misreading this moment.

It’s understandable why he and advisers like Stephen Miller see this as a great opportunity to really push the commie label. The Beltway media and certain members of the Democratic coalition have been calling for the fainting couch ever since those New York primaries unseated a couple of incumbents, and it has kicked into overdrive following more recent wins in Colorado. As usual, the political press seized upon an opportunity to show they aren’t biased, so they jumped on the tired storyline of “Democrats in disarray,” and establishment Democrats immediately panicked and went rushing in to help them do it. It’s a perennial weakness of the Democratic Party.

But the fault line on this isn’t democratic socialism. The policies proposed by these candidates are pretty standard issue Bernie Sanders-style progressivism, and they are quite popular among younger voters and even among some of the more populist MAGA types. It certainly isn’t communism, which sounds as anachronistic as it is, and it doesn’t have nearly the pull these Republicans think it has.

The fault line is America’s relationship with Israel and the genocide in Gaza, and it’s bipartisan. There is a sizable faction of the MAGA base, led by people such as commentator Tucker Carlson, former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and podcaster Megyn Kelly, who are opposed to government policy toward Israel on “America First” grounds. It’s fair to say that some leaders of both parties are either purposefully obfuscating the real issue at play, or are willfully misunderstanding it.

Since Trump has started ranting about communism, the press seems to have quieted down a bit. It’s so over-the-top that they can’t grant it any validity, and therefore the critique of the two parties being equally extreme just isn’t playing.

I’m sure we’ll see more garment-rending from the Democrats. It’s just their way. But I suspect that Trump may have overplayed his hand. He’s very unpopular with Democrats and Independents alike; his corruption is so overwhelming that it can’t be ignored, and his Iran war, which is perceived by many, and not without reason, to have been waged on behalf of Israel, is causing turbulence in his own coalition. Yelling “commie” isn’t going to help that. In fact, it’s very likely to make it worse.

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