Trump escalating divisive rhetoric ahead of midterm elections

US President Donald Trump, with the help of many Republican congressional candidates, is dramatically escalating his efforts to take advantage of racial divisions and cultural fears in the final days of the midterm election campaign.

Trump has intensified his divisive rhetoric as part of an overt attempt to rally white supporters to voting stations and preserve the Republican majority in Congress, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

"On Thursday, Trump ratcheted up the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been the centerpiece of his midterm push by portraying a slow-moving migrant caravan, consisting mostly of families traveling on foot through Mexico, as a dangerous invasion," the newspaper said in its report.

He suggested that if any migrants throw rocks they could be shot by the US troops that he has deployed at the border with Mexico.

“If you don’t want America to be overrun by masses of illegal aliens and giant caravans, you better vote Republican,” Trump said at a rally in Columbia, Missouri, on Thursday.

The remarks capped weeks of incendiary rhetoric from Trump, and they come just five days after a gunman reportedly steeped in ­anti-Jewish conspiracy theories about the migrant caravan slaughtered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in what is believed to be the worst anti-Semitic attack in US history.

The president has repeatedly described the migrants as “bad thugs” and criminals while claiming without evidence that the caravan contains “unknown Middle Easterners” — seemingly suggesting there are terrorists mixed in with the families fleeing violence in Central American nations and seeking asylum in the United States.

Trump said Wednesday that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if Democratic donor George Soros, who is a Jewish billionaire, had funded the migrant groups — echoing the conspiracy theory that is thought to have influenced the accused Pittsburgh shooter.

Many Republican congressional candidates, from Connecticut to California, have followed Trump’s lead in the use of inflammatory messages, including an ad branding a minority Democratic candidate as a national security threat and a mailer visually depicting a Jewish Democrat as a crazed person with a wad of money in his hand.

Trump and his supporters argue that the media and the president’s political opponents accuse him of spreading racism and anti-Semitism as a way to demean the president and divide Americans.

“We have forcefully condemned hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice in all of its ugly forms, but the media doesn’t want you to hear your story,” Trump said at the Missouri rally.

“Trump has opened up a whole new playbook to sow discord and to weaponize hate,” said Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. “Everyone has seen low politics. We’ve all done low politics. But Lee Atwater would be shocked at the vitriol we’re seeing today.”

Atwater, who died in 1991 at the age of 40, was a Republican consultant who was known for crafting culturally divisive messages. He aroused controversy through his aggressive campaign tactics, such as race-baiting and appealing to racial prejudice.

PressTV-Trump posts racist new ad days before midterm elections

US President Donald Trump and the Republican Party accuse Democrats in Congress of plotting to help Central American migrants invade the US.

In one of the most racially charged US political ads in decades, Trump and the Republican Party accuse Democrats in Congress of plotting to help Central American migrants invade the country and kill police.

The web video features Luis Bracamontes, a Mexican man who had previously been deported but returned to the United States and killed two sheriff's deputies in the state of California in 2014.

Trump tweeted the new web video on Thursday, five days before the midterm congressional elections.

Trump’s rhetoric also has prompted outrage from a handful of lawmakers from his party, particularly those who are departing Congress or are in Democratic-leaning districts. Republican leadership has largely remained silent.

Senator Jeff Flake, A Republican from Arizona and a frequent critic of Trump who is retiring at the end of his current term, said in a tweet Thursday that the ad featuring Bracamontes was “sickening” and that “Republicans everywhere should denounce it.”

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