Why the Democrats "Authoritarian" Criticism Didn't Work on Trump Voters
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Former President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with attendees at an Arizona for Trump rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Democrats are still baffled by Donald Trump's election victory over Kamala Harris. They can’t comprehend how his voters overlooked his authoritarian rhetoric and fear he will be a dictator. No, Trump wasn’t a dictator in his first term, but they argue he didn’t have enough time before. Yes, groceries and gas prices may decrease, but is that more important than saving democracy?
There are two easy answers for the pondering Democrat. Answer number one is that Democrats are proof-texting to build the case that Trump is a tyrant in the making. Answer number two is that Kamala Harris was a far greater risk to our rights and the country. In this article, we will address answer number one.
Proof-texting is a technique of cherry-picking scriptures out of context from the Bible to prove a theological concept. Once you stack enough scriptures, you may think you have a strong doctrine, but genuinely reading the text in context would utterly destroy your argument.
When Democrats like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or anchors on MSNBC go on rants about how terrible Donald Trump is, they have a typical list of grievances: he called neo-Nazis “very fine” people, promised a “bloodbath,” he’d be a dictator on day one, he wanted to execute Liz Cheney, and so on. If you line up all these things, it develops into a troubling pattern. And Democrats would have a good point if their examples weren’t distortions or straight-up lies.
Donald Trump didn’t call neo-Nazis “very fine” people, no matter how many times President Joe Biden, President Barack Obama, and Vice President Kamala Harris lie about it. In the same press conference they’re quoting, Trump said he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white supremacists and that they needed to be condemned totally. The “very fine people” on “both sides” of the issue were debating whether a statue of General Robert E. Lee should be taken down. Some saw him as an offensive figure and wanted him gone while others wanted to preserve history, even if it’s complicated. Trump warned that if they took down Lee’s statue, people who continue taking down more, such as George Washington. The media thought he was crazy, but it wasn’t too much longer that in 2020, historic statues were attacked during the BLM riots across the country.
Trump also never said he would cause a bloodbath. He was, clearly, talking about the economic repercussions of the auto industry if Biden’s policies stayed in place.
Trump did jokingly admit to being a dictator—for one day—when it came to issuing executive orders on the border, to poke fun at the people who accuse him of being a dictator. If Trump truly wanted to rule the US with an iron fist, he would probably do it for more than 24 hours.
When it comes to the Liz Cheney remarks, the context of Trump’s comments was also clear. In a conversation with Tucker Carlson, Trump called Cheney a “war hawk,” who was always eager to go to battle. He asked how she would like it if the guns were turned on her. In other words, he’s using the “chicken hawk” critique. There are plenty of people willing to send men to war yet would feel differently if their own lives were on the line.
Some say it’s reasonable to read Trump’s lines uncharitably because there is a pattern of violent or authoritarian rhetoric, but the pattern is that his critics continuously choose to take his statements out of context.
In the case of Vice President Kamala Harris, she and her campaign deceptively edited Trump’s words in hit pieces and blatantly lied to reporters about his words. For example, when Trump vowed to protect women—whether they like it or not—from crime, terrorists, and other threats to their safety, Kamala Harris HQ took Trump’s “whether they like it or not” and imposed it on headline after headline about abortion. Harris also reiterated this bold strategy during an interview.
Here's an important question that I continuously ask voters: If Donald Trump is as bad as they say, why don’t they just tell the truth about him?
When Trump’s team cut ads about Kamala Harris wanting to ban fracking or taxpayers funding the gender transitions of migrant detainees, those are true things on Harris’s record. He ran a campaign against her. She ran a campaign against an imaginary person. The Trump people already knew—even if they didn’t like him—was one they already survived.
The media may have wanted to compare Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally to Adolf Hitler’s rally, but that’s hard to do when you consider how many Black Republicans and Orthodox Jews waving Israeli flags were in attendance. The media and many Democrats have bought the hype of Trump being a dictator, but their fictionalized worldview of Donald Trump didn’t materialize outside the borders of their delusional minds.
So, the next time you consider asking a Trump supporter why they weren’t afraid of Donald Trump assuming power, go back to the source of your fear, shine some light on it, and ask yourself if there’s genuinely a monster in the closet or if your coat was playing tricks on you again.
