Desperate Trump's 'final battle' is to destroy America â and that's not an exaggeration
"2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country, we will rout the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
It had all the horrendous exterminationist language of the vermin speech â âdemolish,â âexpel,â âcast out,â âthrow offâ and âroutâ. And it is also a plea to his followers, many of whom are Christian nationalists and follow a plethora of end-time conspiracy theories, or both. Itâs the âfinal battle,â he told them, an armageddon of sortsâwording that gets them completely engaged â and he needs them âat my side.â
But this is also defendant Trumpâs final battle for his freedom, and he was admitting it and asking for help from his massive cult following. Heâs been in and out of court many times now, and, in his increasingly addled mind, heâs been thoroughly humiliated by prosecutors and judges whoâve put him in his place. The process has made vividly clear to him the likely ramifications. According to Rolling Stone, Trump has even fretted with his lawyers about the possibility of prison, asking what it would be like.
For Trump, recent months have surely been like the Obama roast at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner â the kind of humiliation that spurs him to get revenge. Heâs out of power, and heâs been made to feel very small, and itâs only going to get worse next year. Heâs looking at the handwriting on the wall through his paranoid filter: Theyâre going to put him in prison and take away his businesses, his real estate, everything.
Combine that with his metal acuity in decline â as heâs displayed several times in thinking President Obama is the person heâs running against and confusing Jeb Bush and George W. Bush, among other weird momentsâand you have someone who is that much more desperate and delusional.
Trump sees a five-alarm fire, and heâs going for broke. While on the one hand, he is fervently trying to gain power again and transform America into a dictatorship, per Project 2025, in which he squashes the cases against him and weaponizes the government against his perceived enemies, Trump also seems to be planning for the possibility of losing the election.
Letâs first be clear that weâre talking about Trump here â and a Trump in mental decline â so donât read too much into the word âplanning.â Again, this is a desperate person grasping at things. In the event he loses the election, he knows he canât attempt to pardon himself or have state trials pushed off that are already likely to drag on past the election. But he still has his movement, which could wreak havoc â if he can get them motivated.
Curiously, while the MAGA base is supporting him fervently in the polls (and polling is a problem, and even he knows it canât be relied upon), theyâre not showing the passion by putting their bodies on the line for him â not the way they used to, camping out in lines to see him. Heâs not getting the numbers he used to get at his larger rallies, which now often show venues with empty seats and reports at some of only âhundredsâ of supporters and smaller venues, like high school gyms.
Trumpâs campaign says it has often opted for smaller âretail politicsâ types of events, perhaps with his campaign knowing they canât fill large venues a lot of the time. There have not been massive protests at his court appearances, where anti-Trump protestors have even often outnumbered pro-Trump protesters.
Like any narcissist, Trump is very sensitive to his followers depth of commitment. Trump is ramping up the toxic fear, pushing the limits entirely in exploiting hate and bigotry, pointing to the enemies âwithin the confines of our country,â in the hopes of motivating that base to come to his defense and do whatever it takes to defend him, no matter what happens in the election.
The historian and expert on authoritarianism, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, explains how Trump is conditioning people to accept and even embrace violence as the only right thing to do.
[H]e conjures existential threats to the nation from non-White immigrants and an expanding cast of internal enemies, calls the thugs who are in prison for assaulting the Capitol on Jan. 6 "political prisoners," and praises autocrats such as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin who depend on propaganda, corruption, and repression to stay in power.
All of this is part of his effort to re-educate Americans to see violence as justified, patriotic, and even morally righteous.
And she makes the following comparisons to fascists in history:
"But to get people to lose their aversion to violence, savvy authoritarians also dehumanize their enemies. Thatâs what Trump is doing. Hitler used this ploy from the very start, calling Jews the âblack parasites of the nationâ in a 1920 speech. By the time Hitler got into power in 1933 and translated dehumanizing rhetoric into repressive policies, Germans had heard these messages for over a decade."
Trump is certainly doing this to more easily carry out his extremist and violent promises should he be reelected. He will engage in retribution, as he and his advisers have indicated, and, as The Washington Post reported, quoting people inside Trumpâs orbit, he will invoke the Insurrection Act of 1871, using the military to squelch internal dissent.
In one clip recently, Trump even vaguely implied a run for president yet again after 2024 â which is currently unconstitutional, but who knows what theyâll do â and will want to fulfill the promises of internment camps and mass deportations. No one should put anything past him.
But he may also be ratcheting up the violent rhetoric should he lose the election as well. Re-educating his followers, as Ben-Ghiat states, âto see violence as justified, patriotic, and even morally righteous,â works for him if he loses too, as heâll inspire mass riots and violence, the likes of which will make January 6th look like the tourist event Republicans have excused it as.
He wants his followers to do anything to destabilize any future government â and surely heâll say the election was rigged â but most importantly, to keep him out of prison, whatever it takes, no matter how implausible it may seem in the end. (Remember, this is not a clear-thinking, rational person weâre dealing with.)
The desperation Trump feels â fueled by the visions of prison life and the loss of all that he hasâis surely part of whatâs causing him to go full-on Nazi. But itâs also the worry he may have that his followersâ support is softer than it once wasâthat they really like him but arenât willing to go to the mat â that has him laying out a âdo or dieâ scenario.
Heâs telling them itâs time for them to show their true loyalty, to put up or shut up and help âroot outâ and exterminate the âvermin,â and âexpelâ and âdrive outâ the âleft-wingâ thugs and others he perceives as the enemies, in what is âour final battle.â
The corporate media has got to make this clear. As the respected journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen has been repeating, they must be focused on ânot the odds, but the stakesâ in their election coverage. Trumpâs motivations and his actions â both now and if he were to become president, as well as if he were to lose â are the story right now.
Samuel Alito
Samuel Alito (Photo by Nicholas Kamm for AFP)