In a rambling, two-hour rant Saturday night, Donald Trump sought to turn the tables on President Joe Biden and the Democrats, denouncing Biden’s September 1 speech on the danger of fascist dictatorship posed by Trump and MAGA Republicans and last month’s FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago as an unprecedented attack on democracy “from the radical left.”
The entire event on Saturday confirmed the fascistic character of the Republican Party and Trump’s ongoing efforts, backed by the party leadership, to, in Biden’s words, “give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”
At the same time, the rally underscored Trump’s ability to exploit mass social anger and disgust with the Democrats, one of the two entrenched parties of American capitalism, which has, no less than the other state-sanctioned party of the ruling class, presided over decades of war, rising social inequality, economic exploitation and suppression of working class struggles.
It was noteworthy, for example, that while Biden was silent on the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, knowing it has virtually no popular support, Trump made a point of denouncing the $80 billion allocated thus far for the war and warning that it could lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and even millions of people.