Donald Trump's increasingly – and admittedly – dark rhetoric betrays his fears about losing the election for the second time in a row, according to an expert.
The former president has been ratcheting up dour fables about "mentally impaired" political opponents, murderous migrants and an impending World War III, and a recent New York Times analysis found he uses nearly a third more negative words than positive in speeches that have nearly doubled in length since 2016. USA Today reported that Trump himself admits to going dark in the closing stretch of his campaign.
"I’m just saying this is dark," Trump said Sept. 28 during his Sept. 28 speech in Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin. "This is a dark speech."
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Trump returned to the site of his first apparent assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, last week, where he called for unity but also warned "we have an enemy from within, which I think is much more dangerous than the outside enemy."
"We have an evil world," Trump added. "We have a very sick world."
Trump has always used strident language, but political analysts say his increasingly vicious insults – calling Kamala Harris "deranged" and Tim Walz a "total moron" – and apocalyptic warnings about his possible election loss offer a revealing insight into his own view of his chances.
"Trump intensifies his language in response to stress – when he’s feeling like a loser, he gets more aggressive," said Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric who teaches at Texas A&M University.
His lies have also become more outrageous and obviously false, according to experts, such as his double-down on debunked claims about migrants stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
"Now he’s just saying stuff that is completely and utterly made up with zero kernel of truth," said Liz Mair, an anti-Trump Republican consultant.
However, some political analysts believe his doom-and-gloom offensive is merely a calculated effort to turn out the voters he's banking on to win the election.
"Trump’s increasingly repugnant rhetoric is an effort to win over undecided [and infrequent] voters," said Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg.
"If you’re not normally inclined to vote, policy differences aren’t going to motivate you to do so," Goldberg wrote. "But being told America’s very existence depends on it might."
