Donald Trump turns up his racism rhetoric to bolster the maga cult base close to mid term elections

Boston Globe opinion by Renée Graham, opinion columnist, associate editor.

Trump makes racism his closing argument for the midterms
His hate-filled rhetoric will become more vile as Donald Trump becomes more desperate.

The federal agents who searched the home of Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota on Monday in Washington, D.C., were looking for one specific thing — a concrete reminder for Donald Trump’s disgruntled white supporters as to why they first fell in love with him more than a decade ago:

Racism.

Without question, Trump’s immigration policies already leave no doubt that in his administration, the “worst of the worst” primarily means Black and brown people. But as he tries to energize Republican voters weeks before the midterm elections, Trump has ramped up his racist attacks.


At his rally in Ohio on Monday, Trump claimed to know nothing about the search of Omar’s home conducted by Homeland Security agents. But, as usual, he disparaged the congresswoman, long a target of his ire, whom he called “a disaster.”

“She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military. All they do is shoot each other,” Trump said. 

Omar was born in Somalia and became a US citizen in 2000. “And she comes into our country and she says, ‘I have a constitutional right.’ She’s got a constitutional right. She’s telling us about the Constitution. And she comes from one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet.”

His followers chanted “Deport, deport” — which did nothing to lower their gas and grocery prices or make health care more affordable but did boost the racist ideas they share with their president.

Once, the Department of Justice generally avoided such public investigations of candidates within 60 days of a primary or general election.

Hours after her home was searched, Omar, who has been an outspoken Trump critic, posted on social media, “I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.”

Nor will Trump, even as support for his fellow Republican politicians sinks under the weight of his failing presidency.

Gutter racism has always been the tie that binds Trump to his followers. That’s been the case since his first day as a presidential contender in 2015 when he denigrated Mexican immigrants. As a candidate, he proposed a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”; a week into his first White House term, he issued an executive order that banned travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations.

During the 2024, presidential campaign, Trump amplified disgusting lies out of the far-right cesspool that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the pets of their neighbors.

Now Trump is making different, but no less vile, claims about Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan. At that same Ohio rally where he insulted Omar, he called El-Sayed “a jihadist,” only because the Michigan-born contender is Muslim.

At a rally in Syracuse, N.Y., last week, Trump targeted Letitia James, the New York attorney general. He called her “disgusting” and “a dog.” James was recently appointed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul as a special prosecutor to investigate a former Cornell University student’s allegation that she was gang raped by seven members of a since-banned fraternity in 2024.

James, who won a civil fraud case against Trump in 2024, is a Black woman, and Trump seems to have deep animosity for Black women, perhaps because no other group has voted as overwhelmingly against Trump — more than 90 percent — in his three presidential campaigns.

But Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t just generate the applause he so desperately craves from his followers. It also brings potentially dangerous ⚠ ramifications.

In January, as Omar held a town hall with constituents in Minneapolis, Anthony Kazmierczak, identified in published reports as a Trump supporter, ran toward the congresswoman and sprayed her with a syringe filled with what turned out to be apple cider vinegar.

At the time, Trump said Omar “probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.” Kazmierczak later pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to 14 months.

Often, when Trump supporters speak of their disappointment with the president, they’re talking about his bungling of an inherited economy that The Economist called “the envy of the world” in October 2024. But it’s Trump’s devotion to racism and white supremacy that seems to keep his already awful approval ratings from plummeting into single digits.

That’s why Trump keeps churning out the same hateful mendacity. It’s his siren song that steers the MAGA faithful away from facts and voting in their own best interest and straight toward continuing to support his worst-of-the-worst presidency.