Fear and voting
Donald Trump’s terrifying closing message
There is a pattern to the end of his campaigns
IT HAS BEEN nearly a decade since Donald Trump announced his first run for president in 2015.
It is sometimes hard to recall the details of each of his own campaigns, and those he presided over.
They all smush together—a constellation of red MAGA hats and promises to save America.
But look hard and a pattern emerges.
The central tenet of Trumpism, the throughline between 2016 and 2024 and the foundation for his political cult, is that Democrats are to blame for “American carnage”, and he alone can fix it.
Consider three of the four election cycles since Mr Trump first took office: the 2018 midterms, the 2020 presidential campaign and the 2024 race for the White House.
In October of each of these years, just weeks before the poll, Mr Trump has portrayed himself, and his party, as the only defence against a dire threat from illegal immigrants or a diversifying society.
In 2018 the Republican Party would protect Americans from a migrant caravan, thousands strong, heading towards the US-Mexico border.
In 2020, on the heels of national protests against racism, Democrats were planning to “destroy our suburbs”, in part, by building low-income housing for minorities.
This year the message is the same but the details are different.
A Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA), has infiltrated Aurora, Colorado—and is coming to a city near you.
Mr Trump mentioned Aurora during his debate with Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in the midst of a riff against immigrants.
“You look at Springfield, Ohio.
You look at Aurora in Colorado.
They are taking over the towns.”
He has since used alleged TdA activity in Aurora to campaign against the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
“Kamala has imported an army of illegal-alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world,” he told a crowd in Aurora on October 11th.
“To everyone here in Colorado and all across our nation I make this pledge…November 5th 2024 will be liberation day in America.
I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered.”
The true story is foggier.
Tren de Aragua is a real gang, originally formed in the Tocorón prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, according to InSight Crime, a think-tank.
In recent years its influence has expanded throughout South America.
As ordinary Venezuelans fled to America to escape the ruin wrought by Nicolás Maduro, their country’s despotic leader, police have noted the gang’s presence in several American cities.
Since December 2022 some 43,000 migrants have shown up in Denver, Colorado’s capital, which borders Aurora.
Denver saw a larger influx of migrants, per capita, than both Chicago and New York City.
They were “almost universally Venezuelans, and so many of them with the same story”, says Mike Johnston, the mayor of Denver.
He recalls watching from the window of his office as buses of migrants arrived from Texas.
Many Venezuelans who made it to Denver will have settled in neighbouring Aurora, a city of nearly 400,000 which is roughly 30% Hispanic.
Mr Trump claims the gang will kill people willy-nilly while they walk down the street.
Aurora officials insist that its activity is limited to a few run-down apartment buildings reviled among tenants for poor living conditions.
Gigi Hagopian, a tenant and housing organiser, says the fly traps are always buzzing and the roaches threaten to crawl into sleeping residents’ ears.
Ten members of the gang have been arrested thus far.
Yet in a letter to the landlord last year, police said crime at one building increased by 30% between 2019 and 2023, before allegations were made of TdA’s presence.
The building has since been condemned.
“It was really dramatic to say that the entire city is being overrun by Venezuelan gangs and they’re ‘occupying the city’,” says Mike Coffman, Aurora’s Republican mayor.
“It’s not accurate.”
He worries that Mr Trump’s exaggerated rhetoric will hurt the city’s economy by keeping firms from holding conventions in Aurora, or people from moving there.
A recent study from the Justice Department’s research arm looked at arrests in Texas between 2012 and 2018, and found that illegal immigrants committed crimes at a lower rate than legal immigrants and American-born citizens.
Crime in Aurora has fallen over the past year.
This has not deterred Mr Trump from showing videos of alleged gang members in Aurora at rallies around the country.
“I will give you back your freedom and your life,” he says.
But listen closely, and he gives the game away.
TdA are “stone-cold killers”, he told the crowd in Aurora, but “they are really great if you happen to be running against the politician that allowed this to happen.”
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