President Donald Trump has shown a revolting side of his personality as he's crisscrossed the country stumping for Republicans ahead of the midterms, according to a new analysis.
Trump promised the GOP that he would spend the last 30 days leading up to the midterms holding rallies to gin up support for Republicans. Those rallies are happening at a time when the president has one of the lowest approval ratings in modern presidential history, causing some Republicans to distance themselves by removing mentions of Trump from their campaign materials.
David Smith, the Washington bureau chief for The Guardian, wrote in a new analysis that Trump's rallies also seem to have brought out a side of him that seems to speak to the racism that has driven the Make America Great Again outrage machine for the last decade.
"Has any president’s closing message ever been so Islamophobic, misogynistic, and racist, not to mention downright deranged and bizarre?" Smith wrote. "It is like watching a man vomit up bigotry that has been poisoning his soul for decades. Just when you think Trump has hit rock bottom, he produces a jackhammer and starts tunneling to a new nadir of nastiness."
Smith pointed to Trump's repeated references to former President Barack Obama's full name, Barack Hussein Obama, and Trump's comments about Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed as evidence of his new nastiness.
"Trump is on an Islamophobic tear," Smith wrote.
These episodes also seem to point to what the next two years could be like after the midterms, according to Smith.
"His rantings and ravings are a grim omen as he enters the Apocalypse Now phase of his presidency. Like Col Kurtz, he is a god to a fanatical but shrinking band of followers. Like Col Kurtz, he may be on a final descent into madness. Two more years? The horror, the horror," he wrote.