Opinion: Trump tactics are downright dangerous

Over the past few months, Donald Trump has stoked the flames of white resentment on the campaign trail.

Speaking to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last week, the former president — who once referred to himself as a “gene believer” and has a known obsession with genetics and bloodlines — accused migrants coming to the southern border of being “criminals” and having “bad genes.”

It’s the latest in a long line of bigoted and xenophobic statements from Trump, ranging from immigrants migrating from “s—hole nations” to supposedly “poisoning the blood” of the United States. He and his vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance, lied that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.

The pet-eating rumor, originally circulated by neo-Nazi groups, was part of a litany of stories that Trump has used to incite anger and resentment toward immigrant communities. Springfield has endured bomb threats and had to shut down its City Hall, public schools, and motor vehicles offices. To their credit, several Haitian activist groups have sued Trump and Vance for promoting such alarmingly irresponsible rhetoric about their communities.

Vance arrogantly admitted to fabricating the false stories in an effort to garner press attention, further stating “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” So much for honesty and integrity.

The fact that Trump continues to engage in race-baiting tactics is unsurprising. Recall back to July at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago, when Trump demeaned Kamala Harris’s humanity as a Black woman and argued she was a racial hijacker and deceiver unable to decide whether she is Black or Indian. This is an example of Trump’s perverse audacity and arrogance in believing he can decide who the “real” and “legitimate” Blacks are.

Trump’s attacks on non-white people are not relegated to Black people. Asian Americans have been periodic targets of the former president’s acerbic rhetoric. During the COVID crisis, he referred to the pandemic as the “Asian Flu” as an attempt to brew ethnic hostility toward Asian American communities that could potentially position them as targets for violence. That practice of branding migrants as a perpetual “other” has reemerged in the 2024 presidential election.

Of course, we all remember the “Mexicans are criminals, rapists, purveyors of violent crime, and some are, in fact, good people” statement made at the initial moments of his 2015 campaign for president. Let’s not forget, he attempted to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

Non-Christians have failed to escape his jaundiced, opinionated mindset. Trump has repeatedly described Jewish Americans who do not support him as being “bad Jews” who need to “have their heads examined.”

Trump’s acidic rhetoric is seen as a license by his followers to demean and disregard others. He portrays others as existential threats determined to destroy everything his MAGA base admires about the United States. It signals to his supporters that disregarding basic human restraint and destroying perceived enemies “by any means necessary” is permissible. Although there are some conservatives who have denounced the tactics of their more extreme brethren, they seem to be isolated voices in the wilderness rather than taken seriously among Republicans as rational voices of reason.

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. Contact him at:

[email protected]