Trump’s communist scare tactics ignore his affinity for dictators - opinion

If you can’t convince ’em, scare ’em. That’s a favorite strategy of US President Donald Trump, whether in global affairs or domestic politics.

He stood before world leaders at the United Nations last month and declared, “I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran… Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic?”

The Republican Congress was slavishly silent about this threatened war crime.

As polls show his approval tanking, and Democrats likely to take over the House and possibly the Senate in next month’s midterm election, Trump has been flying around the country in Qatar Force One, warning the faithful: “The communists are coming.”

That is backed up with glitzy taxpayer-paid ads – a likely violation of federal law – starring himself, extolling his real and imaginary achievements and vowing, “America will never be a communist country.”

The octogenarian Trump has been falling back on old Cold War scare tactics, unaware it may be ancient history for much of his audience, born since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

He is trying to conflate Democrats, socialists, democratic socialists, progressives, and liberals with communism, and wants his followers to believe that his enemies are fifth columnists sneaking into our good white, Christian, capitalist country to destroy it.

In the view of Vice President JD Vance, they “do not belong in America” and should “get the hell out of here.”

Trump is no Marxist; he is a bona fide capitalist, with a Croesus-like lust for power and riches, especially gold. He can’t resist boasting about his wealth and success. No president has used that office to amass greater personal fortune for himself and his family, and he’s not done yet.

Remember when he ran for president a decade ago, saying he would be too busy to run his companies or play golf, and that he would be losing money by taking the job? Guess what. He was lying. He’s done just the opposite.

Since returning to the White House last year, he has made more stock trades than the entire membership of Congress combined. He reported making at least $2.2 billion in his first year back in the White House, triple what he reported for the previous out-of-office year.

Capitalism is supposedly the opposite of communism. One is built on free enterprise, private ownership of property and business; the other advocates government-owned and controlled business.

US government acquires equity stakes in private companies 

Yet under billionaire capitalist Trump, the United States government has acquired equity stakes worth billions in some 30 private companies involved in national security, mining, nuclear energy, semiconductors, steel, and more.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies called Trump’s action “a significant shift in US industrial policy.”

The Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome said some of these acquisitions were coerced and of “very murky” legal authority.

It is strikingly similar to countries like China, where the government exerts regulatory and political influence in many private companies, taking a financial stake and a powerful seat on the board.

Trump aides say government ownership is simply to protect domestic supply chains, but advocates of genuine free-market capitalism argue that it creates conflicts of interest; the government can’t be both a regulator and a shareholder. If a Democratic administration had tried that, you know who would scream the loudest.

While preaching against communism, Trump exhibits an unusual affinity for genuine communists and assorted authoritarians, strongmen, and dictators.

There is no more powerful communist in the world than China’s President Xi Jinping, who Trump lavishly welcomed to Washington last month. Trump went personally to meet the dictator’s plane at Joint Base Andrews. The last president to greet a foreign dignitary there was Barack Obama in 2015, when he welcomed Pope Francis.

China’s dictator, who does not tolerate a free press and jails those who offend him, got a sumptuous White House welcome, but the American media trying to cover his visit got the boot.

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, urged Trump to “keep in mind that his guest is a brutal, unelected, and oppressive dictator who seeks to dominate his neighbors, and whose massive military arsenal is aimed directly at the United States of America.”

Trump not only didn’t care but, according to his own ambassador, even offered to sell arms to China, something prohibited by US law – not that such details seem to bother this president.

Trump rolled out the red carpet to greet another of his favorite dictators, Russian President Vladimir Putin, when they met planeside in Alaska last year.

Trump has invited him to the G20 world economic forum at his Florida golf club later this year, after being barred since he invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Another favorite communist is North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The two met and later exchanged what Trump called “love letters.” Trump, who is waging war on Iran to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons, seemed unperturbed that he failed to persuade his new pal to stop expanding his own nuclear weapons arsenal, even while helping Iran fight its war against the United States. Lately, Trump has spoken of inviting Kim to the White House.

Trump seems to be ceaselessly feuding with America’s traditional democratic allies such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Denmark while expressing a fondness for Saudi Arabia’s homicidal crown prince, Mohammed bin Sultan (“I like him too much.”), Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt (“my favorite dictator”), Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (“a very good friend of mine”), Nayib Bukele of El Salvador (“one hell of a president”), and former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban (“fantastic man”).

He admires and envies the power of such despots who aren’t troubled by meddlesome parliaments or reporters. Democracy just isn’t his cup of Diet Coke. If anyone doubts that, I refer them to January 6, 2021.

Trump is reminiscent of authoritarian leaders who build cults of personality as they seek to impose not only their will but their persona on their countries. They start by rewriting history and plastering their name and image on coins, currency, passports, park passes, assorted government programs, public buildings, airports, and battleships.

Trump has adopted the old Stalinist epithet “enemy of the state” in his war on journalism. He has sued, subpoenaed, threatened to jail, and banned those who displease him. He has shown a particularly misogynistic penchant for attacking female reporters.

He demands loyalty to himself, not the Constitution, not the nation, but to himself.

He knows slapping the communist label on everyone to his left is a lie, but it is intentionally inflammatory, intended to motivate his red-capped MAGA cult.

Yet they seem unfazed that the three foreign leaders Trump most admires – Xi, Putin, and Kim – are humiliating him and this country daily by providing weapons, satellite intelligence, and even troops to kill Americans and our allies fighting in Iran.

Who’s the real red menace?

The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.