In every "speech" (if by "speech," you mean, "a maniacal march through a miasma of mendacity and madness that would make Lovecraft scream for it to stop"), Trump paints a Brueghelesque picture of streets overrun with immigrant demons who drag precious white maidens into a gaping Hellmouth, where pig-faced criminals run through innocent chain stores and ransack them, dragging their booty to their homes made of fetus bones, where cities crumble as a demonic leader cackles while cutting off the genitals of children and forcing them to use unholy pronouns. If you think I'm making this up or exaggerating for grotesque effect, check out what Trump really said this past weekend. From migrants being "not human" to a "bloodbath" for the economy if he's not restored to the White House, Trump gleefully baits and bashes with abandon. If Joe Biden is re-elected, Trump ominously intones, the world as we know it will cease to be and we will become slaves.
The thing is, though, that Trump promised the same thing 4 years ago if Biden defeated him. In every campaign stop after the nominations were clinched, Trump would talk about the damage Biden would definitely do. Spoiler: None of it happened.
It's such a broad array of ways that Trump claimed the country and individual states would suffer under a Biden presidency that I'm just gonna pull a few quotes from 2020 and see where we stand.
"He wants to destroy your energy jobs in Pennsylvania." Trump said this in Allentown in October 2020. The unemployment rate in PA when he left office in January 2021 was 7.4%. It's currently 3.4%, and I don't think I'm going out on a limb here to say that some of that growth was in the energy industry (especially clean energy, but, shh, don't say anything). Now you might wanna argue that the first number there was still part of the Covid shutdown, and, yeah, but prior to Covid, unemployment in PA was at 4.9%. So, yeah, no matter how you wanna look at it, Pennsylvania should be fucking grateful Biden is president.
"If Biden wins, China wins. And if China has anything to do with this whole deal, if he wins, let me tell you, China will own the United States of America. They will own it." China does not, in fact, own the United States. If we're talking facts, China's investments in the United States have shrunk substantially during the Biden administration. I'm too stupid to understand why, but it is the opposite of what Trump promised.
"The Biden Harris plan would also increase refugees coming into our country by more than 700%. It would be the highest level anywhere in the world." Now this one is kind of interesting because, see, in 2020, during Covid and under the racist Trump administration, the number of refugees the US accepted went down to around 11,400. It's back up to 60,000, so, by my awesome power to do math, that's like a 500% increase, which sounds scary if you're a fucking moron. That's around where it was during some of the George W. Bush presidency. But the United States sucks ass when it comes to taking in our share of refugees. Even if it had been a 700% increase, that would be a pittance compared to countries like Germany, Turkiye, and, yeah, Iran. The US is nowhere in the ballpark of "highest level" in the world.
"They pledged to terminate all national security travel bans, opening the flood gates to radical Islamic terrorism." Yeah, virtually the only actual terrorism during the Biden administration came from MAGA troglodytes and threats from Trump himself. The anarchy that might come has always been from Trump's terrorist organization.
"He wants to terminate religious liberty, destroy the suburbs." Neither of these things are even on the radar of shit that's happening. Of course, the latter thing there was pure racism: "I’m getting rid of a regulation that will move a project next to your beautiful house. Congratulations. You like having a nice project next to your house, I don’t think so. And with it comes plenty of crime," Trump said back in 2020, which was his way of trying to scare white suburban women into his flabby, orange arms.
"They’re going to take your guns away, sure as you’re there. If something happened with me, the guns are gone. Your Second Amendment will be either obliterated totally or almost totally." The guns are fine. You don't have to worry about the guns. This is the United States of America, goddamnit. We will kill each other and ourselves before we give up guns.
You get the idea. Trump promised the collapse of civilization and all we got were more jobs, lower crime rates, and booming infrastructure spending. He told us in 2020 that Biden was a doddering old man who couldn't function, and yet everything, including Biden, functioned amazingly well. Rather than offer a vision for the country that is based on reality, Trump instead is running the same fucking playbook, and he's heightening the fearmongering because the only other option would be to actually promise to do something more than to close the border, round up anyone who doesn't look right, and shoot shoplifters on sight.
If there's a bloodbath after a Biden victory in 2024, it won't be because of Biden. It will be because Trump's idiot hordes think they have to burn the country down.
