'Running as a dictator': Rhetorician flags alarming change in Trump's speeches

Former President Donald Trump has made a disturbing shift in his 2024 presidential campaign stump speeches, according to a rhetorician raising the alarm about authoritarianism.

“He's running as a dictator," Professor Jennifer Mercieca told progressive commentator Aaron Rupar, "He's determined to destroy the Constitution.”

Rupar published Thursday his takeaways from a conversation with Mercieca after a primary night Tuesday that confirmed Trump and President Joe Biden will once again face off in a race to claim the White House in 2025.

The interview also took place after new reports revealed Trump praised Adolf Hitler to his White House chief of staff and that his 2024 campaign ads monetized Nazi content on Rumble.

"With Trump increasingly sounding like a zooted-out Hitler on the stump," Rupar wrote, "it can be hard for anything President Biden says to break through."

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Mercieca, the author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump," argues Trump's 2024 rhetoric presents a stark change from the rhetoric of 2016, when he first campaigned for the presidency, and before the 2020 election.

"In his previous campaigns Trump presented himself as a demagogue who would work within the system to achieve the MAGA agenda,” Mercieca said. "If there is a second Trump presidency it won't be at all like the first."

Mercieca believes Trump's popularity with his MAGA base is built on his rhetorical "genius," Rupar reports.

She also argues Trump used "war rhetoric" against the U.S. in the weeks leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when his followers tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden.

The Texas A&M professor believes Biden's best rhetorical bet is try and tear down Trump's strong man facade.

"When Biden calls him out for being a loser, it absolutely attacks the central characteristic that those right-wing authoritarians are looking for," Mercieca told Rupar, "which is a strong leader who can take care of the chaos."