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Previously on The Daily.

We didn't want this to be some fan fiction sitting around smoking a pipe, trying to imagine what a second term of Trump would look like.

We wanted it to be rooted in real reporting. Back in April, we introduced a series focused on what a second Trump presidency would look like and what it would mean for American democracy.

It's too much to say it's the end of democracy per se. It's American-style democracy.

In part one, my colleagues Jonathan Swann, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haverman explained how in his first term, Trump encountered government systems and personnel that had blocked the most extreme parts of his agenda and left Trump determined Kermann to remove those obstacles if reelected.

We focused very intently on things that Donald Trump himself cares about, and at the heart of that is power.

In order to do that, they found Trump plans to systematically weed out federal workers at all levels who would stand in his way, take control of agencies that have long operated independently, and use the Department of Justice to punish his enemies. The result would be a presidency with few constraints on its power. Today, part two of our series, Trump's Message. Charlie, we are here at the Republican National Convention on the Eve of the speech in which Donald Trump is going to formally accept his party's nomination. You and I had been working on an episode about Trump's campaign message for this series that The Daily has been doing about what a second Trump term would be like. Candidly, we thought we were done with the episode. Then while Trump was out on the campaign trail delivering his message, he was shot at by a would-be assassin. How do you think about that moment in the context of the conversation that you and I had been having?

I mean, it was this obviously just shocking and horrible moment. It feels in that moment like the whole campaign, the whole world has transformed in this instant. But also the thing that became very clear very quickly was that in a way, this wasn't a news story. It felt like a continuation of the story that we'd been talking about working on this episode. There's this view among Trump supporters that he's just been this target of persecution since the moment he entered politics. This is the latest chapter in that. At this moment, we know very little about the gunmen and what his motives were, what his politics even were. But very quickly, you see this narrative among Trump supporters and among people close to Trump, percolating online that this wasn't just a tragedy. It was an inevitability.

I do believe that Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting today.

Every Everyone who has called him a fascist, everyone who has called him a threat to democracy.

This was the result of Democrats and the media saying over and over again, Trump's a threat to democracy.

Senator J. D. Vance commenting on X, saying the rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.

And that this was the inevitable product of this reckless language, and it almost cost Donald Trump his life.

Georgia congressman, Mike Collins, suggesting Biden ordered the shooting And someone even further than that.

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene saying that, The Democrat Party is flat out evil, and yesterday they tried to murder President Trump. Saying that Biden and the Democrats were responsible for the shooting, even though we know very little about the politics or the motive of the gunmen at this point. But in their mind, no matter what the shooter's motive was, the The assassination attempt was the climax and the confirmation, really, of the story that Trump had been telling for years.

Right. And that is the story that we are going to be talking about today, the story that Trump has been telling about the forces out to get him.

Exactly.

First, they tried to ruin his reputation, and he's more popular now than ever. Then they tried to bankrupt him. Then they tried to put him in prison, and he's freer and has made other people free with him. And then last weekend, they tried to kill him, and there he is over there, alive and well.

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Wabarro. This is a special episode of The Daily. Since When he began his latest campaign for President, Donald Trump's message has changed, becoming darker, angrier, and more focused on those out to get him than ever before. It's a rhetorical shift that many Americans have overlooked, but one that, if Trump is elected, could profoundly shape his second term. My colleague, Charles Holmes, has been studying the evolution of that message and what exactly it means to his supporters and for the country. It's Thursday, July 18th. Charlie, thank you for being here in the studio.

Thanks for having me.

We first spoke to Charlie before the attempt on Trump's life.

I've been attending Trump rallies on and off since late 2016, shortly before he won the presidential election that year. What was unusual was that even after he won, Trump kept doing these rallies. He kept going out and talking to people after he was inaugurated throughout his first term in office.

The man likes a rally.

He loves a rally. He loves being around these crowds.

Thank you, everybody. What a great welcome. Sit down, relax. We'll be here for a while.

Then he kept doing them even after he was President. Doing these roadshow appearances, almost, or on behalf of candidates in the '22 elections. Then he really hits the gas in the spring of last year as he's ramping up his presidential campaign.

In a sense, he never really stopped talking since 2015, 2016?

He never stopped talking. I think that quite a long time ago, a lot of people who like him and a lot of people who don't like him, both those groups started to tune him out. It can be a little tough to really follow follow the ways in which what he said has changed, but it has changed in ways that I think are really important to pay attention to and to understand, because Donald Trump in 2024 is a very different Donald Trump than we saw in 2016. In understanding that evolution in his messaging is helpful to understand how he's selling and justifying a second term that would really be unlike anything we've seen potentially in modern US history.

So let's talk about that. How, in your mind, has Trump's message changed? I think for context, we should go back to the beginning to 2016.

Well, first, let me just acknowledge what we all know, which is that when Donald Trump came on the scene, so much of the language he used was really unprecedented in modern politics.

Is she crooked or what? Okay, give me a point. Is she crooked?

He insulted people. He used a lot of dog whistles when he talked about immigrants.

With immigration, you better be smart and you better be tough, and they're taking your jobs, and you better Be careful. You better be careful.

I think that's what most people remember about his message at that time. But I think what we might forget or what people might have missed is that he also spent a lot of time during that campaign focused on creating this sense of a political movement.

Because this is indeed a movement, folks. When you look at this room and you look at thousands of people outside, this is not just a normal situation. This is a movement.

He spoke in this upbeat and optimistic way and really tried to conjure this sense of community around this us that he was talking about in his speeches.

That's why we're asking Bernie Sanders voters to join our movement so together we can fix the system for all Americans so important.

He talked a lot in his speeches about us.

The media and the political elite don't know the pain and the suffering these people are living on. But I figured it out a long time I'll go, and that's why I'm here. I'm with you. Rather than where I was, I was on the other side.

He didn't define it really specifically. It was this open invitation for anyone who was disaffected with the status quo of American politics and the establishment.

When one part of America hurts, we all hurt. When one American suffers an injustice, all of America suffers together. We're all together.

Like you said, Charlie, it's very easy, I mean, I'm guilty of it as much as anyone, of forgetting that there really was a prominent unifying aspect to some of what Donald Trump was saying in 2016 and even into the early months of his presidency.

I think that's right. I mean, however divisive his rhetoric was and however conspiratorial it could be and however xenophobic it could be, the flip side of this was he was speaking of this country that he was aspiring to lead, that was really united under his leadership.

January 20th, 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.

All that was required for membership in that America was support of Donald Trump, no matter who you were. Look at this guy.

He just keep shouting. He loves...

I think that's right.

You love me, right? Okay. Hey, you know what? He's a guy, but I love him. Okay? He's a guy, but I love him.

What happened to the us, this relatively broad us, if you support Trump, once Trump actually becomes President.

So once he settles into his presidency, when he's going out there and speaking to people, he's still talking about this us. But the tone and the focus really starts to change. What happens is he starts running into these roadblocks to his presidency, and the roadblocks take several different forms.

We're going to fight this terrible ruling. We're going to take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Early on, the courts are blocking some of the executive orders he's issued on the border wall, immigration, the ban on citizens from Muslim-majority countries from entering the US, and the Russia investigation begins.

All we hear about is this phoning Russia witch hunt. That's all A lot of people were killed. It becomes this very prominent symbol on the far right, and for militia groups, violent federal government overreach. By launching his campaign here, Trump's message is not subtle.The Biden regime's weaponization of law enforcement against their political opponent is something straight out of the Stalinist-Russian horror show.There's really only one reason that you hold a rally in Waco, and that is to draw a clear line between your own experience at the hands of the federal government and what happened in Waco in the '90s.And the weaponization of law enforcement, Banana Republic, that's what we have become. Let there be no doubt- And as the campaign goes on, the language that he's using to describe his enemies is far more stream, really way off the map of even how Trump has talked before. We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin with within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible. They'll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.At this point, they're not just his enemies. He's comparing them to vermin. He's using really the ugliest possible language, words he's really never used before.This is the language of dehumanization.Yes. His message now in 2024 is not only are these people coming after him, they're trying to corrupt the entire country and to destroy America from within.What is Trump saying about how this dehumanized enemy from within is now trying to destroy the country in 2024?The message at the rallies is really that these forces have continued to wage this battle on a couple of different fronts. One of them is immigration. In 2016, he talked about immigrants as an external threat. In 2024- Biden's conduct on our border is, by any definition, a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America. For the first time, he's really claiming that this isn't just an invasion, as he calls it. It's a deliberate plot by Joe Biden, by the Democratic Party, to import people to form a permanent Democratic voting class who will keep them in power for the foreseeable future.Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters, and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations.The theory Trump is evoking is that Democrats are facilitating what they hope will be a self-perpetuating Democratic Party majority that will win them elections. We should say, of course, that there is no evidence that that is true.That's right.Okay, so you said that there were a couple of ways that Trump is speaking about this conspiracy, this enemy from within What are the other ways?The other way is that Biden and the Democrats are wielding the power of this corrupt, weaponized justice system.All of this persecution is only happening because we're leading so big in the polls. If I wasn't running right now or if I was in fifth place, I wouldn't be under indictment. I wouldn't have any problems right now.We talked before about the indictments and how Trump is alleging that these indictments are evidence of the system's corruption. He's now taking that a step further to say that there are planning to use this weaponized justice system not only against Trump, but against anyone that they want.If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone. These are bad people. These are, in many cases, I believe, sick people.He's saying, Look, I President of the United States, and they still came after me. So if they can do that to me, well, they can do that to you.They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.And it is telling right now He's given up this good life in Mar-a-Lago and potentially even his freedom for the people who believe in him. And that makes him a martyr for all these people who are supporting him.And in the end, they're not after me. They're after you. And I just happened to be standing in their way. It's my honor to do so.What all this amounts to is Trump saying, The only way to prevent what happened to me from happening to the rest of you is to reelect me. Put me back in the White House, and I will make sure this weaponized justice system does not set its sights on you. That while Joe Biden and the Democrats accuse him of being this threat to democracy, that they are the real threat to democracy. You hear him talking about that very explicitly.You know, they have this standard line, Donald is a threat to democracy. Some advertising agency wrote that down. I'm not a threat. I'm the one that's ending the threat to democracy.If you extend the logic of that argument that Trump is making about Biden's approach to immigration, Biden's approach to criminal justice, and all the prosecutions that Trump faces, It feels like what Trump is really arguing, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that the only way democracy endures is if he reclaims the presidency. If he doesn't reclaim the presidency, then what we have is something short of democracy.That's right. From the beginning of his presidency, Trump has presented himself as this completion of democracy, the president who really truly brought democracy to the United States and returned the country to its people. What he's arguing now is an extension of that, that all these illegitimate forces have been trying to undermine that real American democracy from the beginning, and now they're converging on his campaign in an effort to stop him from coming back.What feels complicated about this is that if I'm listening to Trump deliver this message, it feels like it's not just a call to reelect him President, but a pretty strong case for Trump doing whatever he thinks he needs to do as President that might normally perhaps be seen as undemocratic or antidemocratic. All the things that our colleagues have talked about Trump wanting to do, consolidating power, taking over agencies, no President has taken over in the past, firing government bureaucrats who have never been fired before if they get in his way. Then Trump could argue, as he seems to be right now, Look, I'm doing these things to safeguard democracy, even if many people look at these actions and they say, No, you're actually undermining democracy.That's right. The overall message of his campaign is that America is facing a threat so grave from its internal enemies that extraordinary measures might be necessary to stop them. That's what the mission of this second term will be.When we win the election a little more than a year from now, I will appoint a real special prosecutor to expose the monumental corruption of the Biden crime family once and for all.Sometimes those extraordinary measures are very specific things, the things that our colleagues have talked about, one of them being appointing what he's called a real special prosecutor to go after Joe Biden.And unlike the witch hunt that I've been going through ever since we came down that beautiful escalator in Trump Tower. They will be properly prosecuted. I promise you that they will be looked at- But other times, he'll speak the playbook of the day, whether it's a deep state or some shadowy interest in the government. First, they try to cancel you. The second thing that they try to do is they try to convict you of something. Then the third thing that they try to do is they try to kill you. That's just what happened with Trump.He's fighting on, literally pumping his fist and saying, fight, fight on. There's something deeper here. This is a spiritual battle we're locked in right now here in the United States, and he's at the tip of the spear of it.We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The Democratic rebellion against President Biden intensified on Wednesday. Party leaders successfully pushed to delay his nomination by a week in order to prolong the debate over his viability. And the highest-profiled Democrat to date called on Biden to step aside. That Democrat, Representative Adam Schiff of California, said that he doubted that Biden could defeat Donald Trump in November. Schiff becomes the 23rd Congressional Democrat to ask Biden to end his campaign. And FBI officials have told members of Congress that the gunmen who tried to kill Trump used his cell phone to search for images of both Trump and Biden, and to search for the dates of Trump appearances and the Democratic National Convention. Most politically motivated assassins leave a discernible trail of views. But so far, there is no evidence that the shooter in this case had strong partisan feelings. Today's episode was produced by Asta Chattervedi and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Michael Benoît and Rachel Quester, with help from Lindsay Garrison, was researched with help from Susan Lee, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, Diane Wong, Ron Umistow, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by by Alyssa Moxley, with help from Chris Wood.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansberg of WNDYRLE. Special thanks to nick Pitman and Michael Bender. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Bivaro. See you tomorrow.

A lot of people were killed. It becomes this very prominent symbol on the far right, and for militia groups, violent federal government overreach. By launching his campaign here, Trump's message is not subtle.

The Biden regime's weaponization of law enforcement against their political opponent is something straight out of the Stalinist-Russian horror show.

There's really only one reason that you hold a rally in Waco, and that is to draw a clear line between your own experience at the hands of the federal government and what happened in Waco in the '90s.

And the weaponization of law enforcement, Banana Republic, that's what we have become. Let there be no doubt- And as the campaign goes on, the language that he's using to describe his enemies is far more stream, really way off the map of even how Trump has talked before. We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin with within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible. They'll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.

At this point, they're not just his enemies. He's comparing them to vermin. He's using really the ugliest possible language, words he's really never used before.

This is the language of dehumanization.

Yes. His message now in 2024 is not only are these people coming after him, they're trying to corrupt the entire country and to destroy America from within.

What is Trump saying about how this dehumanized enemy from within is now trying to destroy the country in 2024?

The message at the rallies is really that these forces have continued to wage this battle on a couple of different fronts. One of them is immigration. In 2016, he talked about immigrants as an external threat. In 2024- Biden's conduct on our border is, by any definition, a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America. For the first time, he's really claiming that this isn't just an invasion, as he calls it. It's a deliberate plot by Joe Biden, by the Democratic Party, to import people to form a permanent Democratic voting class who will keep them in power for the foreseeable future.

Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters, and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations.

The theory Trump is evoking is that Democrats are facilitating what they hope will be a self-perpetuating Democratic Party majority that will win them elections. We should say, of course, that there is no evidence that that is true.

That's right.

Okay, so you said that there were a couple of ways that Trump is speaking about this conspiracy, this enemy from within What are the other ways?

The other way is that Biden and the Democrats are wielding the power of this corrupt, weaponized justice system.

All of this persecution is only happening because we're leading so big in the polls. If I wasn't running right now or if I was in fifth place, I wouldn't be under indictment. I wouldn't have any problems right now.

We talked before about the indictments and how Trump is alleging that these indictments are evidence of the system's corruption. He's now taking that a step further to say that there are planning to use this weaponized justice system not only against Trump, but against anyone that they want.

If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone. These are bad people. These are, in many cases, I believe, sick people.

He's saying, Look, I President of the United States, and they still came after me. So if they can do that to me, well, they can do that to you.

They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.

And it is telling right now He's given up this good life in Mar-a-Lago and potentially even his freedom for the people who believe in him. And that makes him a martyr for all these people who are supporting him.

And in the end, they're not after me. They're after you. And I just happened to be standing in their way. It's my honor to do so.

What all this amounts to is Trump saying, The only way to prevent what happened to me from happening to the rest of you is to reelect me. Put me back in the White House, and I will make sure this weaponized justice system does not set its sights on you. That while Joe Biden and the Democrats accuse him of being this threat to democracy, that they are the real threat to democracy. You hear him talking about that very explicitly.

You know, they have this standard line, Donald is a threat to democracy. Some advertising agency wrote that down. I'm not a threat. I'm the one that's ending the threat to democracy.

If you extend the logic of that argument that Trump is making about Biden's approach to immigration, Biden's approach to criminal justice, and all the prosecutions that Trump faces, It feels like what Trump is really arguing, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that the only way democracy endures is if he reclaims the presidency. If he doesn't reclaim the presidency, then what we have is something short of democracy.

That's right. From the beginning of his presidency, Trump has presented himself as this completion of democracy, the president who really truly brought democracy to the United States and returned the country to its people. What he's arguing now is an extension of that, that all these illegitimate forces have been trying to undermine that real American democracy from the beginning, and now they're converging on his campaign in an effort to stop him from coming back.

What feels complicated about this is that if I'm listening to Trump deliver this message, it feels like it's not just a call to reelect him President, but a pretty strong case for Trump doing whatever he thinks he needs to do as President that might normally perhaps be seen as undemocratic or antidemocratic. All the things that our colleagues have talked about Trump wanting to do, consolidating power, taking over agencies, no President has taken over in the past, firing government bureaucrats who have never been fired before if they get in his way. Then Trump could argue, as he seems to be right now, Look, I'm doing these things to safeguard democracy, even if many people look at these actions and they say, No, you're actually undermining democracy.

That's right. The overall message of his campaign is that America is facing a threat so grave from its internal enemies that extraordinary measures might be necessary to stop them. That's what the mission of this second term will be.

When we win the election a little more than a year from now, I will appoint a real special prosecutor to expose the monumental corruption of the Biden crime family once and for all.

Sometimes those extraordinary measures are very specific things, the things that our colleagues have talked about, one of them being appointing what he's called a real special prosecutor to go after Joe Biden.

And unlike the witch hunt that I've been going through ever since we came down that beautiful escalator in Trump Tower. They will be properly prosecuted. I promise you that they will be looked at- But other times, he'll speak the playbook of the day, whether it's a deep state or some shadowy interest in the government. First, they try to cancel you. The second thing that they try to do is they try to convict you of something. Then the third thing that they try to do is they try to kill you. That's just what happened with Trump.He's fighting on, literally pumping his fist and saying, fight, fight on. There's something deeper here. This is a spiritual battle we're locked in right now here in the United States, and he's at the tip of the spear of it.We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The Democratic rebellion against President Biden intensified on Wednesday. Party leaders successfully pushed to delay his nomination by a week in order to prolong the debate over his viability. And the highest-profiled Democrat to date called on Biden to step aside. That Democrat, Representative Adam Schiff of California, said that he doubted that Biden could defeat Donald Trump in November. Schiff becomes the 23rd Congressional Democrat to ask Biden to end his campaign. And FBI officials have told members of Congress that the gunmen who tried to kill Trump used his cell phone to search for images of both Trump and Biden, and to search for the dates of Trump appearances and the Democratic National Convention. Most politically motivated assassins leave a discernible trail of views. But so far, there is no evidence that the shooter in this case had strong partisan feelings. Today's episode was produced by Asta Chattervedi and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Michael Benoît and Rachel Quester, with help from Lindsay Garrison, was researched with help from Susan Lee, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, Diane Wong, Ron Umistow, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by by Alyssa Moxley, with help from Chris Wood.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansberg of WNDYRLE. Special thanks to nick Pitman and Michael Bender. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Bivaro. See you tomorrow.

the playbook of the day, whether it's a deep state or some shadowy interest in the government. First, they try to cancel you. The second thing that they try to do is they try to convict you of something. Then the third thing that they try to do is they try to kill you. That's just what happened with Trump.

He's fighting on, literally pumping his fist and saying, fight, fight on. There's something deeper here. This is a spiritual battle we're locked in right now here in the United States, and he's at the tip of the spear of it.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The Democratic rebellion against President Biden intensified on Wednesday. Party leaders successfully pushed to delay his nomination by a week in order to prolong the debate over his viability. And the highest-profiled Democrat to date called on Biden to step aside. That Democrat, Representative Adam Schiff of California, said that he doubted that Biden could defeat Donald Trump in November. Schiff becomes the 23rd Congressional Democrat to ask Biden to end his campaign. And FBI officials have told members of Congress that the gunmen who tried to kill Trump used his cell phone to search for images of both Trump and Biden, and to search for the dates of Trump appearances and the Democratic National Convention. Most politically motivated assassins leave a discernible trail of views. But so far, there is no evidence that the shooter in this case had strong partisan feelings. Today's episode was produced by Asta Chattervedi and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Michael Benoît and Rachel Quester, with help from Lindsay Garrison, was researched with help from Susan Lee, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, Diane Wong, Ron Umistow, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by by Alyssa Moxley, with help from Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansberg of WNDYRLE. Special thanks to nick Pitman and Michael Bender. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Bivaro. See you tomorrow.