President Donald Trump on Sunday delivered a dark closing message to supporters in multiple states: A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for scary non-white people and the Chinese government taking control of your country.
It wasn’t much of a departure from his closing message four years earlier, when a Trump television advertisement in the campaign’s final days positioned a “global power structure” — coincidentally illustrated by prominent Jewish Americans George Soros, Janet Yellen and Lloyd Blankfein — as scheming to undermine America’s working class.
But in November 2020, a new cast of villains has emerged.
In Michigan, for example, Trump bragged of having reversed an Obama-era regulation concerning low-income housing in suburbs and warned that Joe Biden would put Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) in charge of federal housing policy if victorious on Tuesday. Trump then said Biden would make Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress and a Somali refugee as a child, “in charge of immigration.”
Joe Biden’s plans to admit more refugees into the United States, Trump said, “will turn Michigan, Minnesota, and many other Midwest great states into refugee camps, which I’m sure you’re thrilled about.” Later he wondered aloud why the Department of Justice hadn’t investigated Omar or another frequent target of his, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for elections-related violations.
The President says the justice department should be investigating AOC pic.twitter.com/TKHtMJL2GV
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) November 1, 2020
Turning to Biden himself, Trump played video montages at multiple rallies showing the Democratic candidate — who has famously overcome a stutter — tripping over his words, but only after showing a separate montage of Biden talking about China’s rising economic capacity. The Trump campaign has tried for months to make an issue of Biden’s son’s business dealings in the country and paint the Democrat as “soft” on America’s geopolitical rival. China will “own the United States” if Biden wins, Trump promised in Iowa.
Separately, he lauded the harassment of a Biden campaign bus rolling through Texas on Saturday, an incident that the FBI acknowledged Sunday it was investigating.
“Did you see the way our people, they were, ya know, protecting this bus,” he said, calling his supporters “nice.”
“They had hundreds of cars. Trump! Trump! Trump and the American flag.”
I LOVE TEXAS! pic.twitter.com/EP7P3AvE8L
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020
But casting Democrats as un-American usurpers to his throne was, naturally, only half of Trump’s message: His politics this past half-decade has in part been about building up a new brand of right-wing nationalism, and that message was as prominent as ever Sunday.
Joe Biden is the candidate of rioters, looters, arsonists, gun-grabbers, flag-burners, Marxists, lobbyists, and special interests. I am the candidate of farmers, factory workers, police officers, and hard-working, law-abiding patriots of every race, religion and creed! #MAGA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020
Biden will terminate school choice, eliminate charter schools, defund religious schools, ban prayer in public schools, indoctrinate your children with Anti-American lies, and force you to subsidize extreme late-term abortion. We believe that every child is a Sacred Gift from God!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020
In Michigan, for example, Trump offered a brief aside about wanting to jail Americans who burned the United States flag. As the audience cheered, he beckoned to one group in particular, apparently a huddle of nuns.
“Even the sisters!” he exclaimed, before accusing the left of avoiding the flag. “I always say, if you look at a group, and you don’t see the American flag, you know that’s the opposition.”
Later, after rolling out a laundry list of campaign trail fodder — promising to ban sanctuary cities, heightened penalties for attacking police, and increased protection for religious liberty and the Second Amendment — he went to the real Trump card.
“We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students and restore patriotic education to our schools,” Trump said. “We will teach our children to love our country, honor our history and always respect our great American flag.”
“We love you!” the crowd cheered, as the President made his exit.
