TEL AVIV, Israel: Pressure built around Israel’s prison system Wednesday after fires broke out at several facilities and the government hunted for six Palestinian escapees who have been on the run since they tunneled out two days earlier.
Fires were reported at several prisons amid efforts to try to move inmates as a precautionary measure. An umbrella group representing prisoners from all Palestinian factions called on prisoners to resist being relocated to other facilities and to start fires in their cells if guards try to move them by force. The prisoners group also threatened a widespread hunger strike.
The Israel Prison Service said through a spokesperson that a fire broke out in two cells in different wings of Ramon Prison and that the blaze was brought under control. The Palestinian prisoners group reported fires in Ketziot Prison, and there were media reports of more unrest.
Recriminations reportedly rippled through Israel’s prison system, meanwhile, in the wake of the country’s largest jailbreak of its kind in decades. The six men who escaped, between 26 and 49 years old, apparently dug a tunnel out of Gilboa prison near the occupied West Bank and escaped early Monday.
The massive manhunt through Israel’s north and the occupied West Bank continued Wednesday as the new coalition government sought to maintain calm and Jews celebrated Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.
The most well-known among the escapees is Zakaria Zubeidi, 46, who was a prominent leader in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed group affiliated with Fatah, during the second intifada from 2000-2005. He was later granted amnesty along with other Fatah-affiliated militants, but was arrested again in 2019 on what Israeli authorities said were new terror suspicions.
As a child, Zubeidi had been part of a children’s theater troupe in Jenin established by Arna Mer-Khamis, an Israeli rights activist, that was the subject of a 2004 documentary.
The other five prisoners were members of the Islamic Jihad militant group, and the prisoners’ group said four were serving life sentences.
Inside the prisons, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other factions each have an organized presence and appear to be acting together in the wake of the escape.
The jailbreak poses a potential dilemma for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose security forces coordinate with Israel. His Fatah party has praised the prison escape, but he has not commented on it.
Palestinians view prisoners held by Israel as heroes of their national cause, and have celebrated the prison break. If the escapees are apprehended in the occupied West Bank, many Palestinians are likely to blame the Palestinian Authority, which is already facing a popular backlash after the death of an activist in PA custody in June.
Fires flare in Israeli prisons amid manhunt for 6 escapees
https://arab.news/zxyke
Fires flare in Israeli prisons amid manhunt for 6 escapees
- Fires were reported at several prisons amid efforts to try to move inmates as a precautionary measure
- Recriminations reportedly rippled through Israel's prison system in the wake of the country's largest jailbreak
Trump, in a new interview, says he doesn’t know if he backs due process rights
- Says courts are getting in his way as he moves to deport “some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth”
- Thinks military action against Canada is ‘highly unlikely.’ As for Greenland, “something could happen”
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President Donald Trump is circumspect about his duties to uphold due process rights laid out in the Constitution, saying in a new interview that he does not know whether US citizens and noncitizens alike deserve that guarantee.
He also said he does not think military force will be needed to make Canada the “51st state” and played down the possibility he would look to run for a third term in the White House.
The comments in a wide-ranging, and at moments combative, interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” came as the Republican president’s efforts to quickly enact his agenda face sharper headwinds with Americans just as his second administration crossed the 100-day mark, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Trump, however, made clear that he is not backing away from a to-do list that he insists the American electorate broadly supported when they elected him in November.
Here are some of the highlights from the interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that was taped Friday at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida and aired Sunday.
Trump doesn’t commit to due process
Critics on the left have tried to make the case that Trump is chipping away at due process in the United States. Most notably, they cite the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was living in Maryland when he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador and imprisoned without communication.
Trump says Abrego Garcia is part of a violent transnational gang. The Republican president has sought to turn deportation into a test case for his campaign against illegal immigration despite a Supreme Court order saying the administration must work to return Abrego Garcia to the US
Asked in the interview whether US citizens and noncitizens both deserve due process as laid out in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, Trump was noncommittal.
“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump said when pressed by Welker.
The Fifth Amendment provides “due process of law,” meaning a person has certain rights when it comes to being prosecuted for a crime. Also, the 14th Amendment says no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Trump said he has “brilliant lawyers ... and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
He said he was pushing to deport “some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth,” but that courts are getting in his way.
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” Trump said.
Military action against Canada is ‘highly unlikely’
The president has repeatedly threatened that he intends to make Canada the “51st state.”
Before his White House meeting on Tuesday with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump is not backing away from the rhetoric that has angered Canadians.
Trump, however, told NBC that it was “highly unlikely” that the US would need to use military force to make Canada the 51st state.
He offered less certainty about whether his repeated calls for the US to take over Greenland from NATO-ally Denmark can be achieved without military action.
“Something could happen with Greenland,” Trump said. “I’ll be honest, we need that for national and international security. ... I don’t see it with Canada. I just don’t see it, I have to be honest with you.”
President bristles at recession forecasts
Trump said the US economy is in a “transition period” but he expects it to do “fantastically” despite the economic turmoil sparked by his tariffs.
He offered sharp pushback when Welker noted that some Wall Street analysts now say the chances of a recession are increasing.
“Well, you know, you say, some people on Wall Street say,” Trump said. “Well, I tell you something else. Some people on Wall Street say that we’re going to have the greatest economy in history.”
He also deflected blame for the 0.3 percent decline in the US economy in the first quarter. He said he was not responsible for it.
“I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy because he’s done a terrible job,” referring to his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
Trump doubled down on his recent comments at a Cabinet meeting that children might have to have two dolls instead of 30, denying that is an acknowledgment his tariffs will lead to supply shortages.
“I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”
Trump plays down third-term talk
The president has repeatedly suggested he could seek a third term in the White House even though the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution says that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
Trump told NBC there is considerable support for him to run for a third term.
“But this is not something I’m looking to do,” Trump said. “I’m looking to have four great years and turn it over to somebody, ideally a great Republican, a great Republican to carry it forward.”
Trump’s previous comments about a third term sometimes seem more about provoking outrage on the political left. The Trump Organization is even selling red caps with the words “Trump 2028.”
But at moments, he has suggested he was seriously looking into a third term. In a late March phone interview with NBC, Trump said, “I’m not joking. There are methods which you could do it.”
So JD Vance in 2028? Marco Rubio? Not so fast.
Trump said in the interview that Vice President JD Vance is doing a “fantastic job” and is “brilliant.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom Trump last week tasked to simultaneously serve as acting national security adviser, is “great,” the president said.
But Trump said it is “far too early” to begin talking about his potential successor.
He is confident that his “Make America Great Again” movement will flourish beyond his time in the White House.
“You look at Marco, you look at JD Vance, who’s fantastic,” Trump said. “You look at — I could name 10, 15, 20 people right now just sitting here. No, I think we have a tremendous party. And you know what I can’t name? I can’t name one Democrat.”
Hegseth is ‘totally safe’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been under fire for his participation in Signal text chains in which sensitive information about military planning was shared. But Trump said he is not looking to replace his Pentagon chief.
“No. Not even a little bit. No. Pete’s going to be great,” Trump said. Hegseth’s job is “totally safe.”
The president also said his decision to nominate national security adviser Mike Waltz to be the US ambassador to the United Nations was not punishment for starting the chain to which Waltz inadvertently added a reporter.
“No. I just think he’ll do a nice job in the new position,” Trump said. He said his decision to have Rubio take over Waltz’s duties will likely be temporary.
“Marco’s very busy doing other things, so he’s not going to keep it long term. We’re going to put somebody else in,” Trump said, adding that it would nonetheless be possible to do both jobs indefinitely. “You know, there’s a theory. Henry Kissinger did both. There’s a theory that you don’t need two people. But I think I have some really great people that could do a good job.”
One person he said he is not considering for the post? Top policy aide Stephen Miller.
“Well, I’d love to have Stephen there, but that would be a downgrade,” he said. “Stephen is much higher on the totem pole than that, in my opinion.”
Trump insists he’s not profiting from the presidency, plans to donate his salary once again
Trump denied he is profiting from the presidency, even as he continues to promote a series of business ventures, including cryptocurrency holdings.
“I’m not profiting from anything. All I’m doing is, I started this long before the election. I want crypto. I think crypto’s important because if we don’t do it, China’s going to. And it’s new, it’s very popular, it’s very hot,” Trump said, adding that he hasn’t even “even looked” at how much he’s made from the venture.
Just days before taking office, Trump launched his own meme coin, which surged in value after it announced that top holders would be invited to an exclusive dinner at the president’s Washington-area golf club later this month and a tour of the White House. He also helped launch World Liberty Financial, another cryptocurrency venture, last year.
That’s in addition to a long list of other business ventures, from Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs his Truth Social site, to branded sneakers, watches and colognes and perfumes.
“Being president probably cost me money if you really look,” Trump said. “In fact, I do something that no other president has done, they think maybe George Washington has done.”
He added: “I contribute my entire salary to the government, back to the government. And I’m doing it again.”
Another TikTok deal extension
Trump said he is open to extending the deadline for a deal on TikTok once again.
“I’d like to see it done,” he said. “I have a little warm spot in my heart for TikTok. TikTok is — it’s very interesting, but it’ll be protected.
He later added: “If it needs an extension, I would be willing to give it an extension, might not need it.”
Last month, Trump used executive action to keep TikTok running in the US for another 75 days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership.
White House officials had believed they were close to a deal in which the app’s operations would have been spun off into a new company based in the US and owned and operated by a majority of American investors. But Beijing hit the brakes after Trump slapped wide-ranging tariffs on nations across the globe.
“We actually have a deal. We have a group of purchasers, very substantial people. They’re going to pay a lot of money. It’s a good thing for us. It’s a good thing for China. It’s going to be, I think, very good,” he said. “But because of the fact that I’ve essentially cut off China right now with the tariffs that are so high that they’re not going to be able to do much business with the United States. But if we make a deal with China I’m sure that’ll be a subject, and it’ll be a very easy subject to solve.”
Mbappe scores twice and Madrid win again to trail Barcelona by 4 points ahead of ‘clasico’
- It was the fourth straight league win for Madrid, who last Saturday lost the Copa del Rey final to Barcelona and last month was eliminated by Arsenal in the quarterfinals of the Champions League
- The Basque Country derby ended in a 0-0 draw between Athletic Bilbao and host Real Sociedad
MADRID: Real Madrid survived a late scare but kept pace with leader Barcelona again on Sunday, ahead of their Spanish league “clasico” next weekend.
Kylian Mbappe scored in each half as Madrid held on to beat Celta Vigo 3-2 and remain four points behind the Catalan rivals going into next Sunday’s match in Barcelona.
“La Liga is in Barcelona’s hands, but we’ll have more chances if we’re able to win,” Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti said. “It’s a great opportunity. We’re going to prepare well for Sunday’s game, which I’m not saying will be decisive, but almost.”
Arda Guler also scored for Madrid, who opened a 3-0 lead early in the second half but saw Celta get back into the game toward the end of the match at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium.
Celta had a couple of great chances to complete its comeback, including a shot by Pablo Durán that stopped just short of the goal line after a deflection by Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois in the 78th minute. Courtois had to make a couple of saves near the end to secure the win.
“We did very well for an hour, we could have managed the lead a little better, but in the end it was a nice win,” Ancelotti said.
Barcelona came from behind to defeat last-placed Valladolid 2-1 on Saturday, when coach Hansi Flick rested most of the team’s regular starters ahead of its Champions League semifinal match at Inter Milan on Tuesday. Barcelona and Inter drew 3-3 in the first leg.
Madrid get a scare
Guler put Madrid ahead with a shot into the top corner in the 33rd, and Mbappe scored in the 39th — also finding the top corner — and in a breakaway in the 48th. The France star hadn’t scored in the league since March.
The match appeared under control until Javi Rodríguez pulled the visitors closer in the 69th and Williot Swedberg scored Celta’s second goal in the 76th.
A couple of minutes later, Duran’s shot agonizingly stopped just in front of the goal line after the ball picked up some backspin as it struck Courtois.
“It was a shame,” Celta striker Borja Iglesias said. “We had our chances. That shot by Pablo almost went in. It wasn’t meant to be.”
Celta, which was coming off a 3-0 win over Villarreal, stayed in seventh place.
There were a few jeers from the Bernabeu crowd as Madrid struggled to hold on to its lead late in the game.
‘All the confidence in the world’
It was the fourth straight league win for Madrid, who last Saturday lost the Copa del Rey final to Barcelona and last month was eliminated by Arsenal in the quarterfinals of the Champions League.
“We played the last game (against Barcelona) a week ago. It was a very competitive game and we came close to winning,” Ancelotti said. “We don’t have to invent a lot of things. We’re going to play a serious game. It’s very important. We’re going to play with all the confidence in the world. Despite all the difficulties, we’re there and to be able to fight this match is something nice.”
He said having Mbappe in top form will be key.
“He’s going to be a very important player in this match due to the fact that Barcelona play with a very high line,” Ancelotti said. “His runs in behind are going to be very important and decisive.”
Forward Rodrygo was not included in the squad because of illness.
Basque Country derby draw
The Basque Country derby ended in a 0-0 draw between Athletic Bilbao and host Real Sociedad.
Athletic are three points ahead of fifth-placed Villarreal and six points behind third-placed Atletico Madrid. Athletic was coming off a 3-0 home loss to Manchester United in the first leg of the Europa League semifinals.
Midtable Sociedad is winless in four matches.
Also Sunday, 15th-placed Sevilla drew 2-2 with second-to-last Leganes, while sixth-placed Real Betis beat 14th-placed Espanyol 2-1.
Ruud beats Draper in Madrid Open final to win his first Masters 1000 title
- The 15th-ranked Ruud will return to the top 10 thanks to his campaign in Madrid, reaching No. 7 in the rankings on Monday
- The 13-time tour champion is the first Norwegian to lift a Masters 1000 trophy since the series was introduced in 1990, according to the ATP
MADRID: Casper Ruud became the first Norwegian to win a Masters 1000 title after beating Jack Draper 7-5, 3-6, 6-4 in the Madrid Open final on Sunday.
The former second-ranked Ruud rallied from 5-3 down in the first set and sealed the victory after capitalizing on his lone break at 2-2 in the third.
The 26-year-old Ruud yelled and thrust both arms into the air after clinching the win on his first match point on the Caja Magica clay court.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Ruud said. “(This was) one of the really big goals I dreamed about when I was young, so it’s an incredible feeling to accomplish it. Also the way I did it today, it was a great match. I knew Jack had been playing unbelievable all year, and especially in this tournament, so I knew that if I didn’t bring my A-plus game, I was going to be whooped around the court.”
The 15th-ranked Ruud will return to the top 10 thanks to his campaign in Madrid, reaching No. 7 in the rankings on Monday.
“Luckily, I played really well,” Ruud said. “Jack has become such an incredible player, on any surface now ... This is a really big boost for me, and I would like to keep it going.”
The 13-time tour champion is the first Norwegian to lift a Masters 1000 trophy since the series was introduced in 1990, according to the ATP. It was Ruud’s third such final after losing to Stefanos Tsitsipas in Monte Carlo last year and to Carlo Alcaraz in Miami in 2022.
Ruud has more titles (12) on clay than any other player since the start of 2020, according to the ATP.
Draper won at Indian Wells in March. After his quarterfinal victory in Madrid, he secured a top-five debut in the rankings.
Draper said Ruud was “braver” than him in the key moments on Sunday.
“You deserve this,” he said. “You’ve obviously put in so much hard work and constantly had very good years on the tour ... This sport is brutal, but I think this loss is going to make me better, so I’ll keep trying.”
The tournament in Madrid was disrupted early last week because of a major blackout that brought Spain and Portugal to a standstill on Monday, prompting the postponement of 22 matches in total.
Ruud had needed to take a couple of painkillers during his semifinal win over Francisco Cerundolo after feeling a rib ailment during his warmup, but there were no signs of any injury on Sunday.
Draper, who like Ruud had not lost a set on his way to the final, served for the first set at 5-4 but couldn’t finish it. The 23-year-old British player was visibly upset, and kept talking to himself and to his staff for a while during the changeover.
The men’s side of the draw lost most of its top players early. Home-crowd favorite Carlos Alcaraz had to withdraw from the tournament because of an injury, and Novak Djokovic lost to Matteo Arnaldi in his opening match.
Top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka defeated Coco Gauff in the women’s final on Saturday.
Scottie Scheffler matches PGA Tour 72-hole scoring record in 8-shot win at the Byron Nelson
- The runaway victory came 11 years after his PGA Tour debut at the Nelson as a high school senior, and 22 years after a photo was taken of then-6-year-old Scheffler with the tournament namesake
- Scheffler shattered the previous Nelson scoring record of 259 set by Steven Bowditch in 2015
McKINNEY, Texas: Scottie Scheffler cradled his year-old son Bennett — the reason he missed his beloved hometown CJ Cup Byron Nelson in 2024 — and struggled to keep his emotions in check for a TV interview, just as he did a few minutes later during the victory speech.
The top-ranked player had time to prepare for the moment because of the giant lead he took into Sunday’s final round, and he even added a little drama by chasing the PGA Tour’s 72-hole scoring record.
Scheffler matched that mark of 253 set by Justin Thomas at the 2017 Sony Open and equaled six years later by Ludvig Aberg at the RSM Classic, closing with a 63 to finish at 31 under par.
The runaway victory came 11 years after his PGA Tour debut at the Nelson as a high school senior, and 22 years after a photo was taken of then-6-year-old Scheffler with the tournament namesake.
Scheffler couldn’t help but think about that day in 2014, when his now-wife, Meredith, was his girlfriend — not yet the mother of their first child — and sister Callie, now a mother of two, was his caddie.
“My family was all able to be here, and it was just really, really special memories, and I think at times it all comes crashing down to me at once,” Scheffler said. “We have a lot of great memories as kids coming to watch this tournament. I just dreamed to be able to play in it, and it’s more of a dream to be able to win it.”
Scheffler was in position to break the tour scoring record before a flubbed chip that led to bogey on the par-3 17th hole and a par from a greenside bunker on the par-5 closing hole. His 8-foot putt for birdie and the record slid by the left side of the hole.
Hideki Matsuyama has the lowest score in relation to par this season, 35 under on the par-73 Plantation Course at Kapalua.
Scheffler tied the 54-hole Nelson record with an eight-shot lead, and nobody got closer than six during the final round. Erik van Rooyen of South Africa matched Scheffler’s 8-under 63 to finish at 23 under, three shots ahead of Sam Stevens and four ahead of another hometown favorite, Jordan Spieth.
“We spoke last night, and I told you it was going to be a steep mountain to climb, and it was,” van Rooyen said. “Scottie was practically flawless, which is kind of what you expect from the world No. 1. Really proud with the golf I played.”
Scheffler and Spieth finished with the two lowest rounds of the tournament. Scheffler opened with a 10-under 61 on Thursday at the defenseless par-71 TPC Craig Ranch in a suburban community about 30 miles north of Dallas.
Spieth shot 62 in the final round, knowing his friend and fellow Texas alum was about to become the first of the pair to win the event they both cherish.
Spieth was the first to make his tour debut at the Nelson, four years before Scheffler. On top of that, Spieth contended as a 16-year-old in 2010, leading many to believe that surely he would have won it by now.
Scheffler stole those bragging rights.
“I think I’ll take it easy on him,” Scheffler said with a chuckle.
Spieth played with Scheffler the first two days and was 12 shots behind him going into the weekend, so he understands how things have changed. They started the tournament with 13 PGA Tour wins apiece. Now Spieth trails for the first time.
“It wasn’t that long ago I was definitely better than him, and now I’m definitely not right now,” said Spieth, a three-time major champion. “I hate admitting that about anybody, but I just watched it those first two rounds, and, like, I’ve got to get better. It’s very inspiring.”
It was the first victory this year for Scheffler after he won a total of 10 times before May in the previous three years combined, including two Masters victories.
Scheffler’s previous best Nelson finish was a tie for fifth in his most recent appearance two years ago. Now he’s the first wire-to-wire Nelson winner since Tom Watson 45 years ago.
“I’m not jealous of him winning this event over any other,” Spieth said. “I’m jealous of anyone that wins any week. When Scottie wins, I’m happy. It doesn’t matter where it is. If I’m not going to win, I like when he wins.”
Scheffler shattered the previous Nelson scoring record of 259 set by Steven Bowditch in 2015. That tournament was played at the TPC Four Seasons. Normally a par 70, that course had a par-69 layout the final three days when heavy rain forced officials to convert a par 4 into a par 3. Bowditch finished 18 under.
The margin of victory was the second-largest at the Nelson behind Sam Snead’s 10-shot win in 1957, when it was known as the Dallas Open Invitational.
“This is a golf course where you can kind of make a run, and I knew that I couldn’t just coast to the finish line today,” Scheffler said. “I knew I had to put together a good round.”
Because of heavy rain Wednesday and Friday, players were allowed to lift, clean and replace their golf balls in the fairway for the first three rounds, but not in the final round. Aberg had so-called preferred lies during the first rounds at the 2023 RSM Classic.
Trump brands his opponents as ‘communists,’ a label loaded with the baggage of American history
- What he’s talking about is not actually ‘communism’, says analyst
- A ‘Red Scare’-era figure influenced a young Donald Trump
For years, President Donald Trump blamed “communists” for his legal and political troubles. Now, the second Trump administration is deploying that same historically loaded label to cast his opponents — from judges to educators — as threats to American identity, culture and values.
Why? Trump himself explained the strategy last year when he described how he planned to defeat his Democratic opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in the White House election.
“All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country,” he told reporters at his New Jersey golf club in August.
Trump did just that — branding Harris “comrade Kamala” — and he won in November. With the assent of more than 77 million Americans who cast ballots — 49.9 percent of the vote — Trump is carrying that strategy into his second term.
What he’s talking about is not actually ‘communism’
In 2025, communism wields big influence in countries such as China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba. But not the United States.
“The core of communism is the belief that governments can do better than markets in providing goods and services. There are very, very few people in the West who seriously believe that,” said Raymond Robertson of the Texas A&M University Bush School of Government & Public Service. “Unless they are arguing that the government should run US Steel and Tesla, they are simply not communists.”
The word “communist,” on the other hand, can carry great emotional power as a rhetorical tool, even now. It’s all the more potent as a pejorative — though frequently inaccurate, even dangerous — amid the contemporary flash of social media and misinformation. After all, the fear and paranoia of the Russian Revolution, the “Red Scare,” World War II, McCarthyism and the Cold War are fading into the 20th century past.
But Trump, 78 and famous for labeling people he views as obstacles, remembers.
“We cannot allow a handful of communist radical-left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws,” Trump said Tuesday in Michigan while celebrating his first 100 days in office. The White House did not reply to a request for what Trump means when he calls someone a “communist.”
The timing of his use of “communist” is worth noting.
Trump’s Michigan speech came during a week of dicey economic and political news. Days earlier, The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs published a poll showing that more Americans disagree with Trump’s priorities so far than agree with them, and that many Republicans are ambivalent about his choices of focus. After the speech, the government reported that the economy shrank during the first quarter of 2025 as Trump’s tariffs disrupted business.
On Thursday, senior presidential aide Stephen Miller stepped to the White House podium and uttered the same c-word four times in about 35 minutes during a denunciation of past policies on transgender, diversity and immigration issues.
“These are a few of the areas in which President Trump has fought the cancerous, communist woke culture that was destroying this country,” Miller told reporters.
His collection of words offered a selection of clickbait for social media users, as well as terms that could catch the attention of older Americans. Voters over age 45 narrowly voted for Trump over his Democratic rivals in 2020 and 2024.
Smack in the middle of Miller’s sentence: “communist.”
“It tends to be a term that is loaded with negative affect, particularly for older Americans who grew up during the Cold War,” said Jacob Neiheisel, a political communications expert at the University at Buffalo. “Appending emotionally laden terms to political adversaries is a way to minimize their legitimacy in the eyes of the public and paint them in a negative light.”
A ‘Red Scare’-era figure influenced a young Trump
The threat that communists could influence or even obliterate the United States hovered over the country for decades and drove some of the country’s ugliest chapters.
The years after World War I and the Russian Revolution in 1917, along with a wave of immigrants, led to what’s known as the “Red Scare” of 1920, a period of intense paranoia about the potential for a communist-led revolution in America.
“McCarthyism” after World War II meant the hunt for supposed communists. It’s named for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican who conducted televised hearings at the dawn of the Cold War that drove anti-communist fears to new heights with a series of threats, innuendos and untruths.
Culturally, the merest suggestion that someone was “soft” on communism could end careers and ruin lives. “Blacklists” of suspected communists proliferated in Hollywood and beyond. McCarthy fell into disgrace and died in 1957.
The senator’s chief counsel during the hearings, Roy Cohn, became Trump’s mentor and fixer as Trump rose as a real estate mogul in New York. The Cold War was more than three decades old. The threat of nuclear war was pervasive.
Communism started to collapse in 1989 and the Soviet Union was dissolved two years later. It’s now Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin.
But communism — at least in one form — lives on in China, with which Trump is waging a trade war that could result in fewer and costlier products in the United States. By week’s end, Trump was acknowledging the potential consequences of his government stepping in: Americans might soon not be able to buy what they want, or they might be forced to pay more. He insisted China would be hurt more by the tariffs.
The real modern debate, Robertson says, is not between capitalism and communism, but about how much the government needs to step in — and when. He suggests that Trump is not really debating communism vs. capitalism anyway.
“Calling people who advocate for slightly more government involvement ‘communists’ is typical misleading political rhetoric that, unfortunately, works really well with busy voters who do not have a lot of time to think about technical definitions and economic paradigms,” he said in an email. “It is also really helpful (to Trump) because it is inflammatory, making people angry, which can be addictive.”
