CNN —
Donald Trump has issued an apocalyptic warning to a group of farmers in the battleground state of Pennsylvania: “If I lose the election, you won’t have your farms for long.”
Speaking at an event on Monday highlighting his vow to protect rural Americans from China’s predatory influence, Trump also showed that with focus he can construct an effective, populist economic argument to help explain his lead in polls on the most important issue in the election.
But Trump’s predictions of mass farm bankruptcies were also a familiar iteration of his gloomy political credo, a concept the former president has adapted to nearly any audience, evoking visions of a nation plagued by crime, economic decline and immigrant incursions.
Many politicians try to win over voters by offering an optimistic vision and selling promises of hope and change. Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is trying to dispel Trump’s dark image of an America in crisis by evoking joy and a new kind of “opportunity economy.” But Trump primarily peddles fear and intimidation.
For example, he warned Americans during a debate with Harris that “you’re going to be heading into World War III,” and during a Fox News town hall earlier this month that “if she becomes president, this country will be in a recession like 1929.” He has called Harris a “communist” and a “comrade,” and implied that the U.S. would no longer have an economy if he lost.
In another twist to his extreme rhetoric, President Trump appears to be looking for a scapegoat in case he loses the election, which is just over 40 days away.
Last week, at an event on anti-Semitism, former President Biden warned that “Jews” would share some of the blame if he were defeated in November. As in the past, he seemed to suggest that Jews should not vote Democrat because Israel might no longer exist without his fervent support for far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The remarks were just the latest occasion on which he has invoked an anti-Semitic trope that suggests American Jews have dual loyalties. While calling on Prime Minister Netanyahu to do more to save Palestinian civilians, the Biden administration has sent vast resources to the Middle East to defend Israel, most notably when it led the international effort to repel a massive Iranian missile attack in April.
The former president took aim at another religious group, posting on social media on Monday that Catholic voters who support Harris “should get their head checked,” and implied that believers no longer believe in Catholicism, with the unfounded claim that “Catholics are literally being persecuted by the current administration.”
Last weekend, the former president posted a bizarre, patriarchal, all-caps message to Truth Social in which he vowed that if he was re-elected, “women will be happy, healthy, confident and free” — sounding more like a command from an authoritarian state than a promise.
Trump, who was convicted by a federal jury in a civil lawsuit for sexual abuse and is trailing Harris among female voters, told the women of America at a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday night: “I am your guardian. I want to be your guardian. As president, I have to be your guardian.”
Against this backdrop, Trump’s dire warning to farmers sounded all too familiar. He claimed that under a Harris administration, energy prices would skyrocket, bankrupting farming businesses in rural areas, many of which support him. “With Harris in power, energy costs are going to go through the roof. They’re going to go through the roof. Farms are not going to last, I’m telling you that,” Trump said.
The evoked threat that farms, the foundation of rural life, could disappear under a Harris administration echoed the former president’s central theme during the debate: “Our country is being lost. We are a failed nation.”
His comments were also reminiscent of one of his most infamous and frightening statements as president, when he told the crowd on January 6, 2021, to march to the U.S. Capitol and “fight like hell” or “you will no longer have a country.”
Republican candidate Biden’s disaster warnings are nothing new. In 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic raged, Biden warned that if he wasn’t re-elected, “our kids wouldn’t go to school, we wouldn’t have graduations, we wouldn’t have weddings, we wouldn’t have Thanksgiving, Christmas, Independence Day.” While those rituals were severely disrupted during Biden’s 2020 presidency, the country gradually bounced back under him, declaring independence from the virus during his first Independence Day celebration since taking office. But life ultimately took a while to return to normal.
Some of this rhetoric is the typical excesses of a lifelong salesman — or what Trump once called “veridical hyperbole” in his book “The Art of the Deal.”
But as he moved from business to politics, Trump’s hyperbole took on a more sinister form: in a scathing speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention, he warned that the United States was sliding into poverty, violence and corruption. In the White House, “hyperbole of the truth” became “alternative facts,” as Trump manufactured a new reality to serve his personal and political goals.
In making dire predictions about America’s future if Harris wins, the former president is employing a tactic typically used by strongmen and autocrats abroad: They personalize their leaders and predict catastrophe if they don’t seize power. When things get bad, only a strongman can save the country. “I’m the only one who can make this better,” Trump vowed at the 2016 Republican National Convention. He took the theme even further this year in a Fox interview, where he frequently praised Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “Everybody says he’s a strongman,” Trump mused. “Sometimes you need a strongman.”
One of the reasons Trump’s speech was effective, at least in terms of solidifying the Republican base, is that it played on the emotions of many voters and legitimized them.
This is where Trump’s authoritarian instincts and economic impulses come together.
The former president on Monday stoked anger over how globalization and industrialization have devastated small farmers in recent decades, blasting China for trying to buy U.S. farmland and for failing to buy $50 billion worth of U.S. agricultural products under a trade deal he struck with President Xi Jinping before the pandemic. The president at the time hailed the pact as one of the best deals ever made, but many experts questioned whether China would abide by its terms.
Trump criticized Biden for not coming down harder on Beijing, and promised that one of his first acts as president would be to call Xi and demand that he impose the death penalty not just on agriculture but also on manufacturers of the chemical that makes fentanyl, which has caused tens of thousands of Americans to overdose. There is no chance that America’s superpower rivals would respond favorably to such an order, but Trump’s threat signaled a strong willingness to stand up for American interests.
“Nobody’s done what I’ve done for farmers,” Trump declared, but many of his generous measures — sending billions of dollars in subsidies to the agriculture industry during his presidency — were intended to cushion the impact of the trade war with Beijing.
The former president warned on Monday that he would just ignore lawmakers if they tried to block new tariffs on China. “I don’t need them. I don’t need Congress, but they’ll approve it. If they don’t approve it, I have the right to impose the tariffs myself,” the former president said.
Trump also said he would impose a 200% tariff on tractor maker John Deere if it moved production to a factory in Mexico. “I’m putting John Deere on notice now: If you do, I’m going to put a 200% tariff on everything you sell into the United States,” Trump said. “It’s hurting farmers. It’s hurting manufacturing.” John Deere announced in July that it would lay off about 600 workers at three U.S. factories as the Illinois-based company moves production to a planned facility in Ramos, Mexico.
Trump’s past fights haven’t always helped American workers: The investment and jobs his predecessor promised to protect often didn’t materialize, and President Joe Biden has frequently touted his investments in manufacturing and infrastructure that his predecessor failed to deliver.
But Trump’s enduring — critics say it’s a fabrication — image as a shrewd businessman and a knack for public photo ops helps explain a new New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday that found 55% of respondents in Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia said Trump is better at managing the economy, compared with 42% who chose Harris.
The vice president has sought to narrow that advantage by embracing her own populist personality, criticizing supermarket chains for price gouging and accusing Trump of planning the same massive tax cuts for the wealthiest that he gave in his first term. Like Trump, Harris has said U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and opposed its sale to Nippon Steel Corporation, Japan’s largest steelmaker.
Harris is scheduled to deliver another speech on the economy later this week, detailing her plans to spread a strong economic recovery more equitably and make home buying easier for working Americans.
But Ms Harris has rarely hosted roundtable discussions with farmers like the one Mr Trump attended on Monday, and even if the group appeared to be made up of Mr Trump’s most ardent supporters, the impression from the meeting sent the message that for once, Mr Trump spent more time listening than talking.
The former president then pulled off another photo op to demonstrate his superiority over Harris, who must run for president as a sitting member of an administration that is receiving low marks from voters over rising prices.
Fresh from warning about the impending destruction of American farms, President Trump stopped by a grocery store in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, to hand a woman some cash to help pay for her groceries. “Look, we just dropped $100 on that. Let’s do it from the White House,” Trump said.
