Donald Trump has made apocalyptic imagery a defining feature of his presidential election campaign, warning supporters that if he does not win – and avoid criminal prosecution – America will enter its death throes.
Daniel Ziblatt, a political scientist at Harvard University and co-author of How Democracies Die, said: “Since 1945 I don’t think there has been a politician in a democracy who’s used such authoritarian language, ever. It’s hard to think of anybody. Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin when running for office don’t use the kind of language that Donald Trump uses, so that’s pretty notable.”
Trump has long sought to sow distrust in the electoral system while using rhetoric outside the boundaries of modern political discourse, dehumanising opponents and immigrants and portraying the US as a nation on the verge of collapse.
During his first run for president, in 2016, he
encouraged his supporters to “
knock the crap out” of protesters and said he
would pay their legal bills if they got into trouble. Should he be denied the presidential nomination at the Republican national convention in Cleveland, he warned, “
I think you’d have riots”.
In the summer of 2020, Trump is said to have called for the military to shoot peaceful protesters in Washington during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. When he disputed his election defeat that year, he suggested that an adverse ruling by the Pennsylvania supreme court would “
induce violence in the streets”.
Then, at a rally before his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, Trump
said: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness … If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”
After the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August 2022, he predicted that “
terrible things are going to happen”, and then quoted the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham warning of “
riots in the streets” if Trump were charged.
Since declaring his candidacy in November 2022, Trump has intensified inflammatory and racist statements on the campaign trail. He has promised to pardon January 6 insurrectionists, suggested that Gen Mark Milley should be executed and asserted that immigrants who are in the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country”.
At last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference,
Trump declared: “This is the final battle, they know it. I know it, you know it, and everybody knows it, this is it. Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country.”
He threatened “
potential death & destruction” if he was charged by the Manhattan district attorney over a hush money payment and criticised those urging his supporters to remain peaceful, fuming on his Truth Social platform: “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!”
In November, at a rally in New Hampshire, he promised that he would “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”. In January this year, returning to New Hampshire, Trump
told supporters: “I only want to be a dictator for one day.”
History has shown that Trump’s words are taken both seriously and literally by his base.
Hannah Muldavin, a former spokesperson for the congressional committee that investigated the January 6 attack, said: “We know when Donald Trump says something – whether it’s in a tweet or in a speech – his supporters listen.
“That’s what we saw on January 6. His tweet – ‘Be there. Will be wild!’ – led to a rise in activity online that led people to organise and come to DC on January 6. When Trump uses this incendiary language, it’s concerning.”
Trump again referred to immigrants in the country illegally in subhuman terms. “In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion,” he said. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it.”
Ziblatt added: “No matter what happens there will be some effort to deny the results of the election if he loses. My best-case scenario is a decisive defeat so that his claims of a stolen election are just simply not credible. But if it’s close, as it seems like all indicators suggest, then I would expect violence and threats of violence.
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Donald Trump is engaged in a misinformation campaign both to raise the expectation of his supporters that he is going to win, he’s ahead, it’s in the bag, and also to set the conditions for claiming that the election was stolen if he doesn’t win. Obviously, these polls are far out and not predictive but he’s clearly using them now to set the conditions.
”
Charlie Kirk, a far-right political influencer, told an audience at a faith-based event last week: “I want to make sure that we all make a commitment that if this election doesn’t go our way, the next day we fight. It’s a very important thing; a lot of people don’t want to hear that. They say, ‘What do you mean it doesn’t go our way? It has to go our way. We have to win.’ I agree.”
Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington and former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, added: “What I fear is that the repetition of violent rhetoric will lead to the normalisation of violent acts. There’s no sugarcoating it. This is a dangerous period for American constitutional government.
“In the end, the institutions are no better or worse than the men and women who are sworn to defend them and, if they do their duty, we’ll be OK. If they’re stormed, or if they’re paralysed by fear, then there’s a chance that they would not hold. It’s more likely than not that it won’t happen but this election will be the ultimate stress test.”
Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots movement, said: “Trump is already spreading lies that this election is rigged and we know there is no realistic scenario where he concedes after losing.
“One big difference between his loss this year and 2020 is this time they’re better prepared and have already gone through a dress rehearsal. But the other big difference is he’s won’t be a sitting president – he’ll just be a sore loser who the nation rejected in record numbers two elections in a row.”
