'Very worst of us': Furious ex-Republican lawmaker slams Trump for dark campaign tactic

An outraged former Republican lawmaker Tuesday argued former President Donald Trump is not playing 3D campaign chess — he's just triggering racism.

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) roared rebukes during his short appearance on CNN Tuesday when he was asked about the underlying meaning of the Republican presidential nominee's recent lewd and bombastic rhetoric.

"He's trying to scare the hell out of the American people," Walsh said. "That's still the realm of the coin in right-wing media is to anger their audience and scare their audience and inflame their audience and p--- off their audience."

Walsh, a former conservative shock jock, admitted this was a tactic he used himself as he attempted to, as he described it, manipulate a broken political system.

"He's appealing to the very worst of us, he's appealing to our fears," Walsh said. "Fear works — my fear is this appeal of his is going to work."

Anchor Brianna Keilar compared the rhetoric of Trump's 2024 campaign — during which he's falsely claimed Haitian immigrants eat pets and immigrants have "bad genes" that make them more likely to commit crimes — to stump speeches from 2015.

At the time, Walsh predicted Trump's attacks on Mexicans crossing the border would see him lead in the polls within weeks, Keilar noted.

"Are the dynamics any different now than they were in 2015?" she asked.

Walsh doubled down on the assertion that fear tactics work and cast blame on the mainstream media for assuming such rhetoric only appealed to Trump's MAGA base.

"He's appealing well beyond his base to white, Black and brown voters who are scared and concerned about immigration and crime and threats with our economy," said Walsh.

"He thinks that he can win through fear, and he probably can, because more Americans are really ... scared and more concerned about immigration now than they were three to four years ago."

Walsh had a single source for the cause of that mounting fear.

"The whole migrant thing that cats and dogs, they're eating pets, that's just to make people think that brown and Black people are coming after you," Walsh said. "And there are a lot of Americans, Brianna, sadly that that will work with."

It was at that point Walsh's video audio cut out. Keilar thanked Walsh for coming on the show and said of his analysis, "you were brilliant."

Walsh responded with silent mock screaming.

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