Trump’s crazed lies about ‘communists’ demand media debunking

But our major news outlets apparently aren’t up to the job.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy speaks to reporters.

Donald Trump’s latest Big Lie is that Democrats are godless communists who want to destroy the country. They are animals, thieves, and lunatics who want to kill Christians, he says. They pose the greatest threat to our country since its founding and must be rooted out like cancer and sent into exile.

I am not making this up.

But rather than debunk Trump’s wildly dishonest, unhinged, and inflammatory new rhetoric, our major news organizations have responded largely with mild stenography – effectively amplifying his lies.

When they should be definitively stating that Trump is wrong, and that Democrats are not actually godless communists, they instead sanewash Trump’s calumnies by casting the victory of a handful of pragmatic and pugnacious democratic socialists as the Democratic party’s dangerous lurch to the left.

And perhaps worst of all, instead of questioning Trump’s mental status and depravity, they focus their attention on whether his new line of attack is an effective political tactic and they ponder how it will play in the midterms.

Let’s be clear: Every time a news outlet quotes Trump calling Democrats communists, they should include an unsparing disclaimer. Something like this:

Trump’s new line of attack against Democrats is dishonest and inflammatory. Communism is an ideology that advocates for the elimination of capitalism in favor of government control of the economy. Democrats, including democratic socialists, favor a capitalist system where less of the income flows upward.

By calling Democrats communists Trump is engaging in red-baiting reminiscent of the false accusations Sen. Joe McCarthy used in the early 1950s to terrorize his political opponents and spread mass hysteria.

And his description of Democrats as [fill in the blank] is delusional, raising serious questions about whether he is a liar or mentally unstable.

What Did He Say?

Trump’s first broadside came on June 26 in remarks to the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference.

“The communists elected in New York City recently,” he said, “want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life.” Communism “destroys everything,” he said.

“It’s happening right now in New York and California,” he said. “You’ll live in squalor. There will be no food; there will be no housing; there will be no military; there will be no law and order; there will be no nothing. There will be no nothing. You’ll be a third world inhabitant in every way, and everyone will suffer or die.”

Then he asserted that “assassinations of those who oppose them is a very important element of their ideology.”

He called Democrats “animals” and “hardcore godless communists.”

And he warned that Democrats “will close your churches in this country” and “will kill your people.”

Lest you think this was a message exclusively tailored for an evangelical Christian audience, Trump expanded on it at two speeches ostensibly hailing the semiquincentennial – speeches that called for appeals to patriotism and unity rather than division and demagoguery.

In his July 3 remarks at Mount Rushmore, he warned that “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.”

Communism, he said, “is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11.”

After a pitch for his election-suppression bill – which, he said, would guarantee that “we will not lose an election for a hundred years” – he asserted that “The Communist Party is made up of illegal immigrants, criminals and everybody that doesn’t want to work.”

And these were not ad libs. A lot of this was written down for him.

For instance, clearly reading the teleprompter, Trump intoned: “Our American ancestors did not shed their blood at Concord and Trenton, Gettysburg and Shiloh, Midway and Normandy, just so that a band of thieves, radicals and lunatics could come in and loot, pillage our nation.”

Instead, Trump promised victory -- apparently through mass deportation of the political opposition. He promised to “send them into exile. We will send them quickly away and we will continue to build our country bigger and better and stronger than ever before.”

Even on July Fourth itself, having turned events on the National Mall into a celebration of himself rather than of the nation, he railed about the alleged communist threat. “Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We’re not gonna let it happen,” he said.

“We like to stop a threat like that immediately and before it begins. It’s like a cancer. You gotta cut it out and you gotta cut it out fast.”

How Was It Covered?

Many news organizations simply ignored Trump’s new line of attack, or treated it like it was no big deal.

The nightly news shows on the major broadcast networks, for example, briefly aired Trump saying “we don’t want communists in this country“ or reported that he “got political, warning of what he called communists threats.” But they left it at that.

I get that’s it’s a busy news cycle and that Trump says lots of crazy things, but I think these remarks were too dangerous to overlook.

Sadly, a lot of the news organizations that did address his remarks chose horserace coverage over thoughtful analysis, casting them as political strategy rather than loony vituperation, and putting the onus on Democrats to respond.

CNN’s first mention of Trump’s remarks to conservative Christians showed Trump saying:

These are not social Democrats. These are hardcore, godless communists. They’re godless communists. All communists are godless. They don’t believe in God. This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago. This is a major threat to our country.

Host Abby Phillips then turned to a Democratic panelist and asked: “I wonder what you think of the risk actually for Democrats in handing the Republicans a message like that?”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Margaret Brennan asked Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) about Trump’s comments – but in the context that “the left wing of your party seems to be expanding.”

She aired the same quote as CNN, then asked Kaine: “What do you make of that attack here? And do you have concerns that the progressive platform of some members of the party will make it more difficult to win in other parts of the country headed into November?”

Kaine dismissed Trump’s comments as “just goofy word salad,” the pivoted to his unrelated talking points.

A June 26 article by Isaac Arnsdorf and Natalie Allison bore the headline “Trump tries out midterms message that focuses on ‘communists’’” Trump “denounced Democrats as communists after self-described democratic socialists won primaries in New York this week, previewing a new emphasis for his campaigning in this year’s midterms,” they wrote.

To their credit, the authors added a little bit of necessary perspective, noting in their third paragraph that “Trump used demonizing and dehumanizing language to describe his political opponents and gave violent warnings about their intentions.”

But nowhere in the article did they actually rebut his assertions.

Another Post story on July 5, by Teo Armus, Mariana Alfaro and Lydia Sidhom, cast Trump’s remarks as a political tactic that Democrats brought upon themselves. The article’s subhead: “Democratic voters are shifting to the left in primaries. Republicans are doing the same with the labels they use to paint them as extreme.”

The article included a telling quote from Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. “When the people we accuse of being socialists admit that they are socialists, it’s not an attack that stings as much,” he said. “Having a new line of attack makes people pay attention.”

The reporters also gave Trump some cover, writing that the Democratic Socialists of America organization “includes several caucuses with different ideologies, some of which are explicitly communist and support the abolition of free markets and private property.”

Only then did they note that “Other DSA caucuses, including most that include candidates who have won elections recently, believe in capitalism that is tempered by heavy taxation and a robust safety net.”

None of the DSA candidates who have won elections recently support the abolition of free markets and private property. None.

The New York Times ignored Trump’s accusations until he made them at Mount Rushmore, when Shawn McCreesh’s article cast his remarks as “sharpening a line of attack that the White House has started to use to head off a newly insurgent progressive wing of the Democratic Party that appears to be resonating with liberal voters.”

McCreesh then quoted Trump over and over again, with no rebuttal, no debunking. The closest thing to criticism in the article was the author’s snarky observation that Trump “said the word ‘communism’ so many times, you might’ve thought the Cold War was still on.”

Politico, true to form, focused exclusively on Trump’s comments as a possibly brilliant political strategy. In the June 29 Playbook, Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns wrote that “Republicans spy a major opportunity in their opponents’ shifting position, and Trump has wasted no time in trying to weaponize the trend…. Expect to hear this on a near-daily basis for the next four months.”

In the July 1 Playbook, the authors wrote that Trump and other senior Republicans are “seeking to tar the entire party with the ‘Communist’ tag that he’s deployed in recent weeks.” In their view, the Democrats are now on the defensive. “How effectively Democrats rebut these attacks will go a long way to influencing the outcomes of November’s most marginal races, given the success Trump had in 2024 in framing his opponents as the ‘radical left.’”

What about the fact-checkers?

The Associated Press’s fact-check outsourced the verdict to “experts” who said Trump’s claims “are off base.”

For instance, Melissa Goldin wrote, “Although there are fringes of the Democratic Party that have expressed support for communist ideas, experts say that they still advocate for a market-based economy and that it is inaccurate to paint the entire party with such a broad brush.”

Politifact chose not to weigh in. There’s nothing on FactCheck.org. The New York Times fact-checkers were silent. The Washington Post doesn’t have a fact-checker anymore.

I did find two admirable rebuttals in the mainstream media.

Writing for the Associated Press on July 2, Steven Sloan put this context in his third paragraph:

The GOP’s ideological focus conflates democratic socialism, which often centers on securing universal healthcare, higher taxes on the wealthy and stricter corporate regulation, with communism, under which private ownership is largely eliminated.

And CNN’s Kaitlin Collins on June 26 aired Trump’s comment about squalor, which she called “borderline apocalyptic.” Then she clearly stated: “While Democrats themselves have been wrestling with what Tuesday night means for the direction of their party, socialism -- much less Democratic socialism -- is not communism.”

Her pushback was so unusual that The Hill wrote a whole article about it.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

The mainstream political media is getting played again. (I’ve been writing about this problem for at least seven years now.)

Our elite political reporters have a long tradition of falling for fake Republican scare stories right before elections. Rather than rebut outrageous GOP fear-mongering, they repeat it, and put the onus on Democrats to respond.

It was “death panels” in 2009. It was “migrant caravans” in 2018. It was “critical race theory” in public schools in 2021. It’s been “voter fraud” for decades.

Now it’s “communism.”

Each time, the political media spreads the lies instead of calling them out, rebutting them, and exposing their malevolent political purposes.

It is now clear that tarring Democrats as communists will be a hallmark of the GOP effort to stave off massive defeats in the midterm elections.

Political journalists have a choice. They can do Trump’s dirty work for him. Or they can stand up for the truth.