Warning about communists
Trump is rebuilding an old enemy image
July 13, 2026 – 9:00 a.mReading time: 4 minutes
The US President has recently spoken remarkably frequently about the fact that the USA is threatened by communism. What does he want to do with this?
David Schafbuch reports from New York
Recently spoke Donald Trump of a “cancer that needs to be cut out.” This meant communism, through which the president… USA supposedly threatened. “America will never be a communist country. That will not happen,” Trump said in a speech in Washington. Trump chose these words not in any speech, but in his address on July 4th, the US national holiday. This year the country even celebrated its 250th birthday.
The president had made similar statements the day before: “There is currently a resurgence of the communist threat in our country,” said the 80-year-old during his speech at Mount Rushmore, the US national monument where the faces of four presidents are carved into the rock. Trump went one step further: Communism is the greatest threat to the USA, greater than two world wars, the attacks on Pearl Harbor or the attacks on September 11th.
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The 80-year-old has probably never spoken about communism as often as he has in the past few days. The president is thus building up a well-known enemy image in order to use it against his political opponents. When he warns against communists, he means representatives of the Democratic Party.
But with congressional elections approaching in November, it is questionable whether the president can achieve a significant turnaround in the polls. Because a communist campaign no longer appeals to every voter in the USA.
Trump’s attacks are not entirely new. During the 2024 presidential election campaign, he had already spoken publicly about what strategy he would use in dealing with his opponent Kamala Harris pursued. “All we have to do is defame our opponent as a communist, a socialist or someone who wants to destroy our country,” Trump said at the time.
Some of Trump’s predecessors had already relied on the enemy image of communism: After Second World War There was a real hysteria in the USA, in which Republicans like Senator James McCarthy warned of supposedly impending communist overthrows. At that time, numerous artists were investigated and blacklists were drawn up.
