“This is out of the autocratic playbook. As autocrats consolidate their power once they’re in office, anything that threatens their power … becomes illegal,” historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat said.

Donald Trump is ramping up his rhetoric depicting his political rivals and critics as criminals, while dropping a long trail of suggestions that he favors outlawing political speech that he deems misleading or challenges his claims to power.

In a speech Friday in Aurora, Colorado, the Republican presidential nominee blasted the immigration system and lobbed a rhetorical grenade at his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“She’s a criminal. She’s a criminal,” said Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York hush money trial. “She really is, if you think about it.”


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    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      A lot of people are more interested in hating people that are different from them than making informed decisions.

      • Captain Howdy@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Sadly I truly believe this is the case. There’s no reason to support Trump positions unless you’re a billionaire. Any non-billionaire that supports his obvious lies and grifts must be a racist, because he doesn’t have anything else going on.

    • Catma@lemmy.world
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      Decades of unfiltered right wing radio declaring Democrats as literally evil and propogating the idea of Republicans being the party of God. When your rival is the embodiment of evil you cannot ever work with them or compromise with them lest you be destroyed.

    • Scolding7300@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      If Hitler got to power with plenty of supporters, there’s plenty of room for propaganda to work in other cases too

    • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
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      I don’t think it’s as close as the news says it is. They want eyeballs. I think it will not be as close as these polls say.

        • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          So did I but it must be said that none of these elections in recent memory have been fair elections. The Democrats win the vote totals. Voter laws in “red” states are so thoroughly fucked that they exclude and oppress voting rights so that the Republican voters outnumber the voters who may vote against them. Then you have gerrymandering on top of that. Despite the prosecutions of Republican voter interference, nothing systemic has changed to make voting a fair competition. Any discourse on changes to these problems seem to get silenced.

          The current system is broken, seemingly intractable, and favors Republicans. Wash, rinse, repeat every four years.

    • PunnyName@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The correct question others should have posited when the idea of race was created by white supremacists.