Trump’s Consistent Message Online and Onstage: Be Afraid

Former President Donald J. Trump swings wildly from topic to topic at his rallies, veering from tariffs to immigration policy to the problems with electric vehicles. But he tends to return to the same apocalyptic message.

“You won’t have a country anymore,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Las Vegas last month. “You’re pretty close to not having one. You better hope I get elected.”

It is a forecast Mr. Trump has made repeatedly over the last year in speeches and interviews and on social media as he campaigns to return to the White House. Although he has long used fear as a tool to stir up his conservative base and sway undecided voters, Mr. Trump has taken his doomsday prophesying to a new extreme, increasing both its frequency and scope.

He regularly predicts that if he loses to Vice President Kamala Harris in November, America will be ruined. World War III will break out, most likely prompting a global nuclear catastrophe. There will no longer be an America. Israel will cease to exist. Murderous immigrant gangs will overrun cities, small towns, the state of Colorado and the entire country. Factories will shutter. Farmers will lose their farms. The United States will face an economic “blood bath.”

During a speech on Saturday in Wisconsin, Mr. Trump declared that immigrants would “walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat” and that “your towns, your cities, your country is being destroyed.” He stopped about 20 minutes in to make light of his dire rhetoric.

“Isn’t this a wonderful and inspiring speech?” Mr. Trump said facetiously, as the crowd chuckled. “I got people sitting in the front row, they’re going, ‘Oh my God.’ They thought they’d be out there jumping up and down. ‘Make America great again.’ We’re going to do that.