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Social democrats’ primary wins give Trump new midterms attack lines

Democratic leaders have walked a tightrope amid far-left victories

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., listens as President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he arrives for Senate Republicans’ lunch meeting in the Capitol on June 24.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., listens as President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he arrives for Senate Republicans’ lunch meeting in the Capitol on June 24. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Victories in some Democratic primaries by far-left candidates have given President Donald Trump a new campaign-trail boogeyman amid his low poll numbers: communism.

“It’s becoming a communist party. These are not social ‘Dumocrats,’ these are hardcore, godless communists,” Trump said Friday, using a relatively new derisive nickname for members of the opposition party. “All communists are godless. They don’t believe in God.” 

Speaking to a friendly crowd at the annual Faith & Freedom Coalition’s conference in Washington, D.C., he went so far as to declare the far-left candidates’ victories represented “the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago — this is a major threat to our country.”

Those Trump remarks came three days after a pair of House Democrats from New York City lost reelection bids to challengers backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, ran on a far-left, affordability platform last year, with three candidates he backed successfully pushing similar policy ideas during their primary campaigns.

The social democrats’ primary wins, collectively, have handed the president a new brush with which to try painting every Democratic incumbent and nominee as too left-leaning to truly represent average Americans.

Don’t expect Trump to drop the new lines — especially after another social democrat, Melat Kiros, defeated 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in a Democratic primary Tuesday in Colorado’s 1st District.

Trump’s new attack lines, so far, have been one part economic at a time when just about every public opinion poll gives him low marks on economic issues. Some Republicans fear those concerns could cost the GOP the House majority come November.

“Anybody who wants a house, don’t worry about it, just pick the house you want. Everybody gets free food. Everything is free from this point forward. Everyone’s going to vote for me. The problem is, after two or three years, the country is a disaster area,” Trump told the conservative crowd. “The country fails — they always do, it always does. It’s so easy to sell that first year, boy, you’re the most popular. … But you’ll start living in squalor. 

“There will be no food. There will be no housing. There will be no military. There will be no law and order. There will be no nothing,” he contended. “You’ll be a third-world inhabitant in every way — and everyone will suffer or die.”

The new Trump stump lines came after Brad Lander easily defeated Rep. Dan Goldman in the Empire State’s 10th District. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, lost his primary race in a bid for a sixth term in the state’s 13th District to community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier. And a third Mamdani-backed candidate, state Rep. Claire Valdez, defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso for the party’s 7th District nomination as Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez is retiring. 

The president renewed his communism allegations Monday during an Oval Office exchange with reporters after CNN reported that Chevalier once had a since-deleted social media account that contained posts expressing sympathy with communism, Marxism and Soviet figures like Vladimir Lenin, perhaps the leading architect of Russian communism.

“I think it’s the biggest threat to our nation there is — maybe since our founding, that includes World War I, World War II, Sept. 11, it includes the Pearl Harbor attack,” he said from behind the Resolute Desk. “I think this is the biggest threat to our nation.”

Trump’s new rhetorical bludgeon, however exaggerated, has continued his second administration’s eagerness to revive the country’s culture wars. Specifically, he has used the far-left nominees to rekindle his claims about a “war on Christians.”

“They want to restart the war on Christians and churches, and as you saw with the communists elected in New York City recently, the communists are not social democrats,” he said on Friday to the conservative faith group. “They want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life. … These ruthless communists will attack all religions, but in particular, Christianity. They always do. They’re after Christianity more than any other religion.

“These are in many ways stupid people, in some ways intellectually probably pretty smart, but they’re people that want to destroy our country. They hate our country, they hate our people, they hate the Democrat Party,” he said, accusing top congressional Democrats of refusing to resist their party’s leftward lurch in some primaries. “The Democrat Party is in big trouble, because this isn’t stopping with New York.”

It’s not just Trump.

NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella, in a Monday statement, took umbrage with a recent X post from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries congratulating his fellow New York Democrats over their primary wins.

“When the so-called ‘Leader’ of House Democrats is publicly congratulating a literal communist, the mask is off,” Marinella said. “This is the mainstream of today’s Democrat Party.” 

Dems on a tightrope

On Capitol Hill, top House Democrats have walked a tightrope over the far-left candidates’ victories. One reason: Only 8 percent of those surveyed this week by YouGov and The Economist self-identified as socialist.

Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California, for instance, said he looked forward to welcoming the New York quartet, but he also took time to thank the departing incumbents and make clear Democratic leaders see wins in swing districts as their path back to the majority.

“The path to 218 isn’t through those districts that the mayor endorsed. The path to 218 [is] Democrats getting rid of the chaos and the insanity that we see [in] districts like New York-17, where Cait Conley got through her primary, and is going to beat Lawler,” Aguilar told reporters last week, referring to moderate GOP Rep. Mike Lawler. “I mean, that’s what this is about. 

“We understand the interest about these races, but our focus, our agenda is 218,” he added. “And nothing that the mayor did helps or hurts us getting … to that number.”

Trump, however, would disagree.

“Communism is very easy to sell,” the president said Friday “It destroys everything.”

To be sure, the social democrats’ primary wins have only further boosted Mamdani’s national presence.

“I think a democratic socialist can get elected anywhere across this country for any position,” the New York City mayor told ABC’s “This Week” program in an interview that aired Sunday. “I think we are seeing a hunger that is not just felt by New Yorkers, but frankly by Americans from coast to coast, for a new kind of politics, one that puts working people at the heart of it.”

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