Donald Trump’s team fears the president’s tactic of suggesting the Democratic Party is being taken over by “communists” is not having a big enough impact.
For the past few weeks, the 80-year-old president has lashed out at the rise of democratic socialist candidates within the party using anti-communist messaging, believing it could turn people away from voting for them in the crucial midterm elections.
However, research from a Team Trump focus group suggests that while the attack line is working to rile up the president’s MAGA base, it is having little impact on key independent voters or those who did not live through the Cold War, sources told Reuters.
“I just don’t think that communism means the same for anybody under 55,” said Amy Koch, a Republican strategist.
In any election, appealing to independent voters is crucial, as convincing them to back your party or candidate can swing the outcome, especially in toss-up races.
Republicans will be desperate to gain any advantage they can ahead of the midterms, as they are widely expected to lose control of the House. Severe backlash against Trump’s second term could mean the Senate is also up for grabs in November.
Analysis by Reuters found that between June 23 and July 6, Trump invoked the apparent threat of communism in the U.S. a total of 81 times.
“America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!” Trump posted in the early hours of June 24 after several democratic socialist and progressive candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their respective primary races.
“You’ve got to cut it out, and you’ve got to cut it out fast,” Trump told a rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during what was supposed to be a nonpartisan July 4 celebration.
Other left-wing and democratic socialist candidates are also winning races in states such as Colorado, Kentucky, and Texas, using billionaire Trump’s handling of the cost-of-living crisis as a central issue in their campaigns.
Trying to paint political rivals as communists was a tactic frequently used by former Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan during the Cold War.
While the focus group found that Trump’s messaging may resonate with Hispanic and Latin American voters who fled left-wing dictatorships, it is failing to capture the minds of many other voters.
U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, who chairs the House Democratic campaign committee, told Reuters that Trump is resorting to “desperate attacks that aren’t actually about the pocketbook issues.”
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said: “The Democrats’ embrace of socialism and communism is an existential threat to our country.
“President Trump will keep calling out their radicalism and drawing a sharp contrast with his commonsense, America First agenda.”
