The Republican candidate has increased personal attacks against his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and showered his supporters with a flood of xenophobic remarks, further accentuating the extremist rhetoric that brought him to power in 2016.
Donald Trump wants revenge. Four years after a defeat against Joe Biden that he never wanted to acknowledge, the Republican billionaire is aiming for re-election in the American presidential race against the outgoing vice-president, Democrat Kamala Harris. He intends to wrest this victory at the end of a campaign marked by violence, fueled by fear of others. As this crucial “Election Day” opens for the United States, Tuesday November 5, franceinfo retraces the chaotic route that Donald Trump chose to try to regain the White House.
This Saturday, July 13, Donald Trump rises to the sound of God Bless the U.S.A. on a red platform matching his famous “Make America Great Again” cap in Butler, Pennsylvania. “What a big, beautiful crowd!” he says under the bright sun, before resuming his diatribes against Joe Biden and immigration. In the polls, the candidate is in a strong position against the outgoing president, aged 81, after a disastrous televised debate against the one who still represents the Democratic Party.
In the crowd, a handful of Americans saw an armed man on a roof, about a hundred meters away. “Look, someone’s on the roof!” a man shouts at law enforcement, according to NPR. In vain. At 6:11 p.m., Donald Trump falls silent, touches his right ear, cowers behind his desk. Three shots ring out, followed by a scream: “On the ground!” Secret Service agents rush on stage. More shots follow, before a final bullet hits the assailant.
“I immediately knew something was wrong. I heard a whistle, gunshots, and I immediately felt the bullet go through the skin.”
Donald Trumpon the Truth Social network
These 42 seconds are broadcast live. Donald Trump has just been the target of an assassination attempt. When he gets up, two streams of blood run down his cheek. He raises an angry fist and harangues the crowd: “Fight!” A second of pure political instinct. “It’s an image, a very moving moment in American politics”notes Jacob Neiheisel, professor of political science at the University of Buffalo. “In 25 or 30 years, we will still look at this image and say that it is really powerful.”
This moment in history occurs two days before a highly anticipated political event: the Republican convention which will induct him as the candidate of the Grand Old Party. Donald Trump appears there on Monday, bandage on his ear and again with his fist raised. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” chants a crowd which gives its champion a long ovation. His inauguration speech, on July 18, is tinged with a rare call for unity: the billionaire sees himself becoming “the president of all America, not half of America.”
Donald Trump, however, vilifies Joe Biden's record and hammers home what he sees as “the greatest invasion in history”led by exiles who “come from everywhere”. Joe Biden is “stupid”, he shouted two days later in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The following days, the Republican candidate widened the gap with Joe Biden a little further, notes the site FiveThirtyEight.
But on July 21, Joe Biden renounces a new mandate. Pushed towards the exit by his own camp, the outgoing president dubbed Kamala Harris, acclaimed by the Democrats. Donald Trump must review his strategy. The billionaire is “disoriented” by this new rival, describes the New York Times. The announcement plunges Donald Trump's campaign into its most eventful period.
His advisors then call on him to play on the contradictions of Kamala Harris, to lead the battle of ideas. Donald Trump follows this advice intermittently. In public, he not only portrays the vice president as a “radical”, but talking about a woman “evil”, “corrupt”, “insane”. In private, supporters hear “asshole”. The invectives with racist and sexist overtones are not long in coming. “She was Indian through and through and all of a sudden she changed and she became a black person,” he blurted out at the end of July.
On his social network, Truth Social, the candidate also shared another user's misogynistic message, accompanied by an image of Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton. With this caption: “It's funny how blowjobs have had a different impact on their careers…” His rival is “as stupid as his feet”, “a real piece of trash”, he repeats over and over – to the point of daring “shit vice president”. “The use of swear words by Donald Trump has increased since 2021”, observes political scientist Daniel Treisman of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He has been studying his speeches since 2015.
“Donald Trump says more bad words than any other candidate since 1952.”
Daniel Treisman, political scientistat franceinfo
The week of the Democratic convention in August, Donald Trump furtively refocused on the economy. He defends tax cuts, talks about deregulation or national fuel production, underlines the New York Times. Verbal sallies are never far away. “Should I make personal attacks? Or avoid them?” he asked during a meeting in North Carolina. The crowd pleads in unison for the first choice. Donald Trump “has always had this very improvisational style”observe Jacob Neiheisel. “He gets himself into trouble, but it seems extraordinarily natural.”
On September 10, at 9 p.m., Donald Trump met his competitor for the first time, during the first – and only – televised debate between them. Kamala Harris shakes the Republican's hand, before being quickly questioned about the economy. Inflation is at the heart of concerns and its rival has the advantage of being better perceived to respond to rising prices. Rather than insisting on this point, the Republican billionaire deviates and denounces the “millions of people invading our country.”
Once again, his obsession with immigration dominates. A little later, Donald Trump goes so far as to relay a false racist statement against Haitian immigrants. “In Springfield, they eat dogs. They eat cats. They eat people’s pets!” Journalist David Muir takes it up and denies the rumor. The former president, accustomed to “fake news”, doesn't want to hear anything: “People are saying on TV that their dog was eaten.”
In the following days, Donald Trump shamelessly hammered this same lie, from Arizona to his golf course in southern California, points out NPR. “We are going to carry out the largest eviction in the history of our country. And we will start with Springfield and Aurora,” he supports, while bomb threats multiply in the first city targeted by his attacks.
These xenophobic and racist words “are common” in her campaign, analyzes the anthropologist Norma Mendoza-Denton, author of the book Language in the Trump era. In recent months, “his racism was much more direct, much more frank, remarks the professor from the University of California. And it is racism linked to the subject of masculinity. He talks about migrant men, who are 'invading' us and who 'are going to attack women'. Of men 'with animal behavior'.”
At the turn of fall, Donald Trump's campaign is accelerating. The land must be plowed, week after week. Even more so in the seven undecided states which will hold the election. His safety was once again threatened: in mid-September, a man was spotted and then arrested near the golf course where he was playing in Florida, ambushed with a semi-automatic rifle in a bush. Another was arrested a month later near a meeting in California.
Donald Trump is confusing, even in his own camp. On October 14, Donald Trump preferred to dance for more than thirty minutes to the sounds of Luciano Pavarotti and Elvis Presley, rather than answer questions from the residents of Oaks, Pennsylvania. Three days later in Florida, he saw the assault on the Capitol as “a day of love”. Donald Trump sometimes gets lost in “longer and vaguer speeches”note Norma Mendoza-Denton.
“He is singled out for his inconsistency and makes it a strategy. He says he practices this 'zigzag' with full knowledge of the facts.”
Norma Mendoza-Denton, anthropologistat franceinfo
The billionaire even puts on the apron in a McDonald's in Pennsylvania. Looking cheerful, the fries lover learns how to cook them and serves several customers. A cleverly orchestrated communication operation against Kamala Harris, who highlighted her former summer job at the fast-food restaurant.
As November 5 approaches, the Trumpian speech becomes more sombre. “It’s very shocking these days,” comments Daniel Treisman a week before the election. “He speaks about American society in a very unusual apocalyptic way. It has become a very important aspect of his speeches. (…) The use of violent vocabulary has clearly increased,” develops the researcher. “He attacks more. (…) His level of violence [verbale] falls between Kim Jong-un's New Year's speeches and Fidel Castro's May Day speeches.”
As proof, he evokes his political opponents as a “enemy from within” against which the National Guard could act if they were to disrupt the vote. Donald Trump also promises to “turn in two seconds” and to expel Jack Smith, special prosecutor investigating his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Even John Kelly, his former White House chief of staff, confirms the dictatorial excesses of the candidate.
“The former president is in the far-right sphere. He's authoritarian, he admires dictators, he's said all that. He meets the definition of a fascist, that's for sure.”
John Kelly, former chief of staff of Donald Trumpau “New York Times”
On October 27, in the famous Madison Square Garden in New York, Donald Trump and his allies delivered a summary of these dark words. A comedian first portrays Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”forcing the billionaire to distance himself from these comments. His advisor Stephen Miller, for his part, promises a “America for Americans, for Americans only”, after an election which will be “a day of liberation” of fictitious occupants: migrants.
As the vote approaches, Donald Trump resumes his rhetoric of“stolen election”which ended up convincing his supporters. He thus denounces a “cheating” has “a scale never seen before” in Pennsylvania, one of the seven swing states. Like four years earlier, the rumor of “fraud” is amplified on social networks, with the help of misleading, unverified or false videos. Donald Trump suggests that he could once again refuse to recognize his defeat if he is beaten. This same speech which pushed his excited supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to try to prevent the certification of the election.
