Donald Trump’s rhetoric is often delusional, but the former president generally seems to understand the kind of criticisms he faces. The Republican rejects the disparagements, of course, but he realizes that they exist.
We know this, of course, because Trump invariably takes the criticisms and applies them to his political foes. The Associated Press reported over the weekend on a classic example of the phenomenon.
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday further escalated his immigration rhetoric and baselessly accused President Joe Biden of waging a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America” as he campaigned ahead of Super Tuesday’s primaries.
“Biden’s conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America,” the Republican said at an event in North Carolina. “Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations.”
Obviously, the rhetoric was bonkers, but it stood out as notable for a couple of reasons.
The first is the bizarre rationale behind the rhetoric, which much of the right has embraced. As the argument goes, the incumbent Democratic president wants an influx of migrants as part of an elaborate scheme that involves registering the new arrivals to vote, all in the hopes of tipping the electoral scales.
In reality, Biden has taken steps to discourage new migrants — he also endorsed a bipartisan package of conservative border reforms that Trump ultimately helped kill — and the idea that a new arrival can simply be handed a voter-registration form is insane. To register to vote, one must be an American citizen, and the process migrants must go through before even trying to become citizens is difficult and takes many years.
But stepping back, Trump wasn’t simply trying to deceive, he also was trying to confuse. The ridiculous rhetoric, a Washington Post…
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