Donald Trump has been condemning people who disagree with him for quite a while, but the president’s rhetoric about Democrats has taken a rather hysterical turn lately. Earlier this month, for example, the Republican thought it’d be a good idea to push an online item that called Democrats “the party of hate, evil, and Satan.” About a week later, he said Democrats “have the devil’s ideology.”
That was, of course, the kind of ridiculous rhetoric Americans have never heard from a sitting president, but his over-the-top slander of his political opposition is spreading. Take the latest rhetoric from his chief spokesperson, for example.
Leavitt: "The Democrat Party's main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-16T17:09:37.030Z
“[T]he Democrat [sic] Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News, continuing her party’s tradition of getting the opposition party’s name wrong.
Around this time nine years ago, then-candidate Hillary Clinton delivered some unscripted comments about the most radical elements of Trump’s base. To be “grossly generalistic,” she said, “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’”
More specifically, the former secretary of state lamented that so much of Trump’s core support was “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic [and] Islamaphobic” — an assessment that’s stood up pretty well to further scrutiny.
Nevertheless, Republicans became obsessed with Clinton’s phrase, and the media followed their lead. The conventional wisdom was that Clinton had gone too far: Criticizing rival candidates is fine, the argument went, but criticizing Americans (even bigoted Americans) was simply beyond the pale for someone in a position of leadership.
Nine years later, Trump thinks Democrats are the “party of Satan,” and the White House press secretary told a national television audience that the Democrats’ base is made up of terrorists and violent criminals (not to be confused with the violent felons her boss let out of prison just hours after his return to power).
What’s more, a year ago at this time, Trump hosted a hate-filled rally at Madison Square Garden, featuring a pro-Trump comedian who described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage.” A couple of days later, Joe Biden commented on the controversy, telling a group of Latino voters, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters’, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”








