From ‘Deplorables’ to ‘Garbage,’ Democrats Embrace Insults, Intolerance in the Trump Era

Credit: Fox News

Since former President Donald Trump’s first presidential run in 2016, his opponents have thrown an endless series of derogatory terms toward him and supporters. But while some terms attracted scandal eight years ago and even energized the Trump base, the Democrats’ penchant for smearing MAGA supporters and other dissident groups has become a central part of their messaging as Trump appears poised to make a return to the White House.

President Joe Biden’s Tuesday evening comment in which he appeared to refer to Trump’s supporters as “garbage” marked only the latest instance of Democrats affixing a pejorative label to the former president and his supporters.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment during the 2016 campaign backfired spectacularly and saw Trump supporters embrace the label for themselves. The remark drew comparisons to Mitt Romney’s 2012 comment about 47% of Americans, which was similarly a last-minute own goal in a presidential campaign.

Trump’s ascent to the presidency led to further escalations of the rhetoric against his supporters that never let up once he left office. President Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and party leaders have used nearly every opportunity to link Trump and his supporters to the Nazi movement, often on flimsy or ahistorical pretexts. 

The former president has argued that the rhetoric prompted two assassination attempts against him and has potentially normalized targeting his supporters. But the Republicans have not been the sole object of Democratic and left-wing attacks, which have spread to other groups out of step with the party line. Here’s a look at some of the biggest examples:

“Garbage”

Biden’s Tuesday evening retort came as Harris delivered her “closing argument” speech on The Ellipse near the White House and amid fallout from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been,” Biden said. The remark drew immediate backlash, managed to largely overshadow Harris’s own event, and seemed to undercut Democratic outrage over Hinchcliffe.

The White House later provided a bowdlerized transcript that read “supporter’s” and Biden himself clarified that he was referring to Hinchcliffe’s comments. Depite the addition of the apostophe, Harris was forced to distance herself from Biden’s comment, saying “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” when pressed on the matter.

Republicans, for their part, aren’t buying Biden’s explanation.

“The most recent comment is outrageous, yeah. But again, it’s nothing new,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast. “But the mainstream media is trying to cover up. ‘Oh, there’s an apostrophe behind that. He was talking about their, you know, the supporter’s rhetoric.’” 

“No, he’s talking about the supporters. It’s obvious. It’s been obvious for a long time,” he insisted. “Biden’s been accusing half of America of being potential domestic terrorists, and Kamala Harris again, Nazi lovers … Hillary Clinton: ‘deplorables.’”

“Nazis” and “Fascists”

While remarks linking conservative figures to Adolf Hitler, fascism, or the Nazi Party have been common for decades, such comparisons rarely found voice with high-ranking politicians until the Trump era. “What we’re seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden said in 2022, ahead of the midterm elections. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the – I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism.”

Harris, for her part, recently agreed that Trump was a “fascist” when pressed on the matter by CNN, responding simply “Yes, I do.”

Democratic allies in the legacy media, moreover, used Trump’s recent rally in Madison Square Garden to further that narrative, drawing comparisons to a 1939 Nazi rally at the same venue, which has also hosted rallies by Democratic icons such as FDR, JFK, Adlai Stevenson, and the Clintons.

“In that place, it’s particularly chilling, because in 1939, more than 20,000 supporters of a different fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, packed the Garden for a so-called ‘pro-America rally,’” MSNBC declared. “Now, against that backdrop of history, Donald Trump … is once again turning Madison Square Garden into a staging ground for extremism.”

Antisemitism

In the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas raid on Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrations erupted across the nation, especially at left-wing universities. The Combat Antisemitism Movement in September released a report documenting 127 antisemitic incidents in a single week, of which 101 or 79.5%, were acts of the political far left. Just this week, an Orthodox Jewish man was shot in Chicago by a man allegedly screaming “Free Palestine” and “Allahu Akbar.”

The surge in such activities prompted concerns of antisemitism and led to a now-notorious congressional hearing in which the leaders of multiple prestigious schools failed to clearly condemn antisemitism.

Harris, for her part, has tried to curry favor with Muslim-Americans by repeating allegations that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza amid its ongoing war with Hamas. “How about the billions of dollars to Israel?” a protester recently said at a Harris event. “What about the 19,000 children dead, and you won’t call it a genocide?” “Listen, what he’s talking about, it’s real,” Harris said, according to Fox News. “That’s not the subject that I came to discuss today, but it’s real, and I respect his voice.”

The “basket of deplorables”

Trump supporters have largely brushed off many of the pejoratives and jokingly embraced others. Clips went viral of a multiracial group of rallygoers at Madison Square Garden laughing about being “Nazis” in the eyes of the media. Others have posted videos of themselves arriving to vote while wearing garbage bags.

But of the many monikers thrown at them, Trump supporters have embraced none more than “deplorable,” after Clinton used it to refer to what she viewed as a bigoted component of his base.

“You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it,” Clinton said.

Trump’s supporters appropriated the term and, in 2016, parodied promotional materials for the “Les Miserables” musical with Facebook cover photos blaring the words “Les Deplorables.”

Reprinted with permission from Just The News by Ben Whedon.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.