From threats to dog whistles to outright hate speech, Donald Trump has hit a new low in 2023.
Here are his top ten most,disturbing comments for 2023.
Bear in mind that we still have a few days, so he’s got time to say worse shit that this.
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Top Trumps: the 10 worst things the former president said this year
Hard to keep track of all the racist, unhinged, authoritarian comments by the former president? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered
07:00 EST Wednesday, 27 December 2023
In 2015, the man who coined Godwin’s law, a famous maxim about argument on the internet, wrote a column for the Washington Post. Its headline: “Sure, call Trump a Nazi. Just make sure you know what you’re talking about.”
By the lawyer and author Mike Godwin’s own definition, his law reads thus: “As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches one.” Since Republicans fell under Trump’s thrall, the law has often been invoked. Why? See our list of the 10 worst things Trump said in 2023:
Vermin
In November, in Claremont, New Hampshire, Trump continued his dominant primary campaign. His rant was familiar but it held something new:
Hillary Clinton, who Trump beat in 2016, had already likened him to Hitler. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian from New York University, told the Washington Post: “Calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanise people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”
Poison
Of course, the signs were already there. In September, discussing immigration with the National Pulse, Trump said:
He had already promised “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”. Plans to hold migrants in camps would be reported. But Mehdi Hasan of MSNBC summed up the “poisoning” comment as “a straight-up white supremacist/neo-Nazi talking point”. Trump went there again in December, too.
Dictator
Trump wasn’t done. In December, at an Iowa town hall, the Fox News host Sean Hannity asked if he would promise not to “abuse power as retribution against anybody”. Trump said: “Except for day one”, then explained:
Noting Trump’s laughter and the crowd’s cheers, Philip Bump of the Washington Post wrote: “What fun! I guess we can put that to bed.”
Retribution
No one could say such comments were surprising. In March, closing CPAC in Maryland, Trump told conservatives:
Jonathan Karl of ABC would report that the Trump strategist Steve Bannon said Trump was speaking in code, referring to a Confederate plot to take hostage – and eventually kill – President Abraham Lincoln.
Death
In September, the Atlantic profiled Mark Milley, then chair of the joint chiefs of staff. Milley’s work to contain Trump at the end of his presidency was already widely known but the profile set Trump off nonetheless. On Truth Social, referring to a call in which Milley assured Chinese officials he would guard against any attempted attack, Trump lamented …
was moved to take “appropriate measures to ensure my safety and the safety of my family”.
Courts
This has been the year of the Trump indictment. He faces four, spawning 91 criminal charges regarding election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments. On 4 August, lawyers for the federal special counsel Jack Smith notified a judge of a post in which Trump appeared to threaten them, writing:
Trump claimed protected political speech but the exchange teed up one of many tussles over gag orders and the general impossibility of getting Trump to shut up.
Indict
A recurring question: if re-elected, will Trump seek to use the federal government against his enemies? The slightly garbled answer, as expressed to Univision in November, was of course … yes:
Animal
In April, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, filed 34 charges over Trump’s 2016 payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who claims an affair. Trump had already made arguably racist comments about Letitia James, the New York attorney general. Aiming at Bragg, Trump used Truth Social to say:
Calling Bragg an animal played to racism about Black people. “Soros-backed”, commonly used by Republicans, refers to the progressive financier George Soros and is widely regarded as antisemitic.
Whack job
In May, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse of the writer E Jean Caroll. Ordered to pay about $5m, he was not about to be quiet. The next night, in New Hampshire, he ranted:
Carroll called the comments “just stupid … just disgusting, vile, foul”. Then she sued Trump again.
All-out war
Trump is 77. Questions about his mental fitness for power are not going away. Recently, he has appeared to think he beat Barack Obama in 2016 and become confused about which Iowa city he was in. On 2 December, however, another Iowa gaffe seemed to point to a worrying truth: