Donald Trump addressed a crowd of supporters in Durham, New Hampshire on Saturday, December 16 about immigrants. He said: “They’re poisoning the blood of our country.” The echo of Hitler’s writings is unmistakable. In 1925 Hitler had said Jews were “poisoning the blood of others” in Mein Kampf, his 1925 book length diatribe against the Jews. The very next morning after Trump’s Saturday speech, on Sunday December 17, the Beth Israel congregation in Jackson received an emailed bomb threat. Beth Israel cancelled its morning programs while police cleared the sanctuary.
Antisemitic threats and violence have increased rapidly since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October. Synagogues in Columbus and Tupelo also received threats and cleared their buildings the same week. But that is likely not the only cause. Against that backdrop, Donald Trump has only stepped up his use of the language borrowed from Hitler. Speaking in Iowa on Tuesday, December 19, Trump doubled down from his earlier speech in New Hampshire. He said again illegal immigrants are “destroying the blood of our country.” In the past he had also echoed Hitler’s language by calling immigrants “vermin”.
Trump denied in Iowa ever having read Mein Kampf. A 1990 Vanity Fair article, though, asserted Ivana Trump (who died in July 2022), told her attorney, Michael Kennedy, Donald Trump had read Hitler’s speeches complied in a book, My New Order. Trump had kept My New Order in the cabinet by his bed.
Why, though, would Donald Trump, who has a Jewish son-in-law, ever use antisemitic tropes? Here’s an answer: to the dog whistler, in the moment none of it matters. All the dog whistler sees in the moment is the immediate effect of his whistle. Trump decided he could not let this moment pass by without getting the hounds up running.
The lawn of the University of Virginia is a sacred space for many of us who have had the good fortune to spend some time there studying. It is the beating heart of Mr. Jefferson’s Academical Village. When the Neo Nazis invaded the lawn in August 2017 during Mr. Trump’s first term with torches and chants, violence ensued the following day down the hill in town. Then President Trump’s reaction was: “there are very fine people on both sides.” Yet, Mr. Trump, of all people, could not pretend he did not recognize Neo Nazis when he saw them.
We also saw the effect of Trump’s dog whistles at the end of his term leading up to the January 6, 2021 riot. As Liz Cheney has said, Trump “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.” Trump told the Proud Boys in the Presidential Debates to “stand back and stand proud.” They did. Then he told his followers to come on January 6, promising “it will be wild”. They did; it was.
Indeed, Cassidy Hutchinson testified Mr. Trump also told the Secret Service on the morning of the riot to “take the [expletive deleted] mags away. They’re not here to hurt me.” The Secret Service told Mr. Trump the crowd was armed, but Trump had no reason to fear them. He had only had to whistle and they had assembled. At the end of the speech, Mr. Trump gave a final whistle: “We are going to the Capitol!”
Once they reached the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, his supporters, now a mob, ran the final distance up Capitol Hill, baying for the very lives of Congressmen, and most of all, for that of the Vice President.
During the 2020 election Trump had told the press: “Get rid of the ballots, and there won’t be a transfer frankly.” Recently he told Sean Hannity he will be a dictator only on “day one.” Indeed, in the same speech reprising Hitler in New Hampshire, Mr. Trump gushed over Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary. Trump admiringly quoted Putin as saying: “It shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.” Then he called Orban “highly respected.” Both Putin and Orban have taken complete control over the press and media in their countries to replace them with state sponsored propaganda over their peoples.
So, who is Mr. Trump dog whistling now? Apparently to people attracted to a more authoritarian form of leadership than our Constitution provides. The real danger is that if elected, Donald Trump will simply ignore orders of the United States Supreme Court interpreting the Constitution to limit his actions. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 intends to increase presidential power through the placement of unquestioning Trump loyalists (cultists) over the entire government, including military. To paraphrase Stalin’s question about Pope Pius XII (“how many divisions has he?”), how may soldiers will the Supreme Court then have to enforce its orders over a President Trump determined to ignore them? Answer: none.
We are called by our allegiance to the Constitution, to do everything in our power to ensure a President of the United States does not emerge who will ignore the Court and interpret the Constitution for himself, taking all the power. Therefore in 2024 we must dedicate ourselves to elect a President who can be relied upon “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. Dog whistler Donald Trump quoting Hitler is not that man.
Robert P. Wise is a Northsider.
