Another Trump rally. More attacks from former President Donald Trump on immigrants. Here he was earlier today in New Hampshire.

They're poisoning the blood of our country. That's what they've done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They're coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They're pouring into our country.

Let's discuss more now with Seanon, senior political analysts and senior editor at the Atlantic, Ron Brownstein and NYU history professor Ruth Banguiat. She's the author of the book Strong Men, Mussolini to the present. Guys, thanks to both of you. Ruth, I'm glad to have you back on the program. Let me start with you. You've studied fascist rhetoric, autocrats, authoritarian leaders. You and I have talked about this subject many times. What was your reaction when you heard what Trump had to say earlier today?

This is this is fascist rhetoric. The worries about polluting the blood of the superior race go as a standard of Nazism. It's not just the Nazis. It's also fascists. In Italy, Mussolini literally talked about killing rats to go back to Trump's use of vermin. In an earlier speech, he talked about killing rats who were bringing infectious diseases and communism into Italy. So this is fascist rhetoric, and he's using it for a very precise purpose. But we also want to ask why he's using it now so often. And unfortunately, the Trump campaigns made it very clear what they want to do to immigrants, mass deportations, mass detentions, likely abuses and violence in those operations, and dehumanizing immigrants, which is what this language does, is a way to get Americans prepared now to accept these repressions later on. That's what's so terrible, and that's also another thing that's so fascist about this.

Ron, help us look at the big picture here, if you can. Obviously, there are the electoral concerns for the Republicans. It's hard to imagine swing voters in places like suburban Philadelphia or Michigan, Wisconsin, gravitating to this language after they've already rejected it before. This is something that has hurt Trump in previous elections. Why do you suppose, as Ruth was saying, he keeps going back to this? He's been doing this a lot lately out on the campaign trail.

Yeah, well, first of all, it's great to be on with both of you. And like many people in the US, I've learned a lot on these issues in the last few years from Professor Ben Gietzo, I'm really glad to be here with you. Look, the big picture is that the US faces a situation that I believe we have not been in since arguably the two decades before the Civil War. You really have to go back, I think, to John Calhoun's dominance, the South's dominance of the Democratic Party in the 1840s and 1850s to look at the last time the dominant faction in one of our two parties was not committed to American democracy, as we have understood it and practiced it throughout our history. This is an extraordinarily challenging and in many ways, ominous situation to the country, whatever happens in the 2024 election. Trump has shown there is an audience in the Republican Coalition in particular, for all of these kinds of arguments. In polls, while he was President, 90 % of Republicans said Christianity in the US is under attack. Three quarters said that discrimination against YTS is now a bigger problem as discrimination against minorities.

And in multiple polls, Jim, 55-60 % of Republicans said the traditional way of American life is disappearing so fast that true patriots may have to use force to preserve it. So there is an audience for this. But as you note, there is also a substantiala substantial audience that has been mobilized in three consecutive elections to prevent this vision from being implemented. And we are in a position now where a majority of voters are unhappy about the economy, discontented about Biden, maybe think he's too old to run for another term. But it's a very different proposition to say that most Americans, in the end, will be willing to empower someone talking so explicitly, as the professor said, echoing of fascist leaders from the darkest moments of the 20th century. I've said to you before, and I believe again, Trump throws Biden lifelines every day. Voters are unhappy with the way things are going in the country, but that doesn't mean they're willing to go in this direction either.

Well, and Ruth, I wonder, do you think that there's a chance that Trump understands that this doesn't really get him to 270 electoral votes, but that there is a utility in keeping his base amped up on these issues, amped up with this rhetoric because of whatever else he has in store for the country?

I do. I think the Republicans are, like Matt Gates is talking always about how force is how we're going to bring change to Washington. They're not really thinking inside the Democratic box anymore. And he's more concerned, which he has been since 2015. He's just hugely accelerating it now with re-educating Americans to want violence, to be okay with violence. And before, he managed to make January sixth into a patriotic event. Now he's dehumanizing targets that will be people who will be the state enemies, who are already state enemies in Trump 1.0. But now it's a whole other scale. I do want to tell your viewers that if anyone who thinks this isn't going to bother them because they're not an immigrant, they're not going to stop with immigrants. I'm quite concerned that he is mentioning what he calls mental institutions and prison so often. In another speech, he actually talked about the need to expand psychiatric institutions to confine people. And he mentioned special prosecutor Jack Smith as someone who should end up in a quote, mental institution. This is what fascists and especially communists used to do to critics. They used to put people who didn't believe in the propaganda of the state or who were troublemakers into psychiatric institutions.

So the Swath of people, the amount of people who are going to be targeted certainly doesn't stop with immigrants.

Yeah. Ron, I mean, today Trump also vowed to investigate prosecutors. I mean, as Ruth was just talking about Jack Smith there, indemnify police officers as they crack down on crime. He called January sixth prisoners, quote, hostages again. And he went out of his way to say that people are going to start leaving the country in droves if he gets elected? It's almost as he has this crisis scenario that he is going to bring about in this country. It's playing out in his head, and he's sharing that vision with his supporters.

Well, when he was President, I often said that he governed as a wartime President for Red America with Blue America rather than any foreign country as the adversary. And you see that even more explicitly this time. In our Atlantic special issue on his second term, you could look at the variety of plans we've been talking about some of them that he's put forward that would involve projecting federal forces into blue states and cities. He's talking about mass door-to-door deportation. He's talking about rounding up the homeless. He's talking about sending the National Guard into blue cities in unspecified ways to fight crime and restore order. And some people around them have talked about invoking the direction act against protests. What we're talking about is someone who sees himself as using national power to advance factional ends, to impose the agenda that is settling over red states onto blue states and cities, whether that's on voting, whether that's on LGBTQ rights, whether that's potentially likely on abortion, and in many cases with the use of force behind it. As you've been saying, we've been seeing... We're seeing an escalation of this. There may be a majority of Americans who are willing to accept this, but that is a much more difficult proposition than asking whether there are a majority of Americans who are unhappy with the way the economy is going and are willing to just make a change on that front.

I think Trump is making this, if he is the nominee, much harder on himself than you would expect given the level of dissatisfaction with Biden. We saw in 2022, Jim, was that an unprecedented number of voters who said they were unhappy about the economy, dissatisfied with Biden, still voted for Democrats because they view the Republican alternative as too extreme, and that is the door that Trump is opening almost every day.

Yeah, fascinating discussion. I wish we had more time. We'll get back to this issue again and again, but in the meantime, Ron and Ruth, thanks so much for your time this evening. Really appreciate it. You too. Thank you.