In a speech Tuesday before an assembly of evangelicals, Trump said that if Democrats win the November midterm elections there “will be violence.”
For once Trump may be right because that violence he predicts will come not from those opposed to his policies that a victory will overturn, but from his partisans on the alt-right and white supremacists as they did in Charlottesville, Va.
Trump told the audience that the midterm elections were not just a referendum on him, which again he may be right, but “on your religion…It’s a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment,” guaranteed rights that he has repeatedly abrogated since his campaign for the highest office began and into his increasingly deplorable moments in office.
“It’s not a question of like or dislike,” he added, “it’s a question that they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence. When you look at Antifa—these are violent people.” By Antifa, Trump was using a term to refer to the anti-fascist resistance against his administration.
These predictions were remarkably similar to the ones made by his attorney Rudy Giuliani last week when he observed that to impeach his boss would lead to a revolt of the American people. These are veiled, counterintuitive threats to the American electorate, and they are consistent with other more concrete measures to suppress the Democratic vote. But they are no more than threats and there are indications that Americans voters, particularly in key areas of the country are fed up with his further attempts to cower and bamboozle them. And this is certainly the case with primary returns in key swing states such as Florida and the results from recent polls about Trump’s declining popularity.
If there is violence after the midterms it will stem from his promulgations, his anger at seeing his policies overturned, the referendum against his administration made real and a harbinger of even more setbacks in 2020.
We have already had our share of violence in America and for Trump to predict more is not out of the question for someone who has managed and promoted his share of it. That’s why to offset his prediction of violence and to Make America Great Again—Trump Must Go!