Trump's Threats and Intimidation No Longer Work

Tuesday's elections prove that the American people are onto him.

Illustration by Riley Levine

What do you do if you’re a fascistic wannabe dictator currently in power and you’re incredibly unpopular across the country, the government is shut down on your watch, people are about to see massive increases in health care premiums, loss of food support for struggling families, and the disabled and elderly Americans, and all the candidates you support are behind in the polls leading into Election Day? You threaten and attempt to intimidate the electorate into supporting your candidates.

And if you’re Donald John Trump, you fail spectacularly — because the American people are on to you. He has managed to make one of his only accomplishments, a major campaign promise, moderately successful on paper, and yet increasingly unpopular. Trump went all in on a bad bet, making two epically incorrect calculations: He believed all his supporters would cheer his lawlessness and cruelty if it were directed at undocumented immigrants, and thought the rest of us wouldn’t care enough about “those people” to stand up and fight back.

Then there is Trump’s failure to deliver — or even attempt to deliver — on the economy, jobs, and address America’s affordability crisis that is hitting young voters and the country’s rapidly-shrinking middle class particularly hard.

And those young men Trump had won over in 2024? He believed that being a bully and a blowhard would appear so strong and attractive that Gen Z men would ignore everything they struggle with on the daily. Those men have news for Donald: He’s not remotely that strong or that attractive. Young women — actually women, in general — sent an even stronger message: Not only is Trump not strong and attractive, but he and his policies are repugnant.

Millions of Americans across the country stood up against Trump’s threats and for candidates laser-focused on their lives, their struggles, and for a fair and representative government. In New York City, New Jersey, Virginia, and California, more than nine million people voted for a better future and based on exit polls, strongly against Trump, his policies, and his intimidation tactics.

I wonder if Trump still wants to insult and belittle the over seven million people who turned out for the “No Kings” march in October. Because it turns out that AI-generated videos of Trump wearing a crown and shitting on Americans doesn’t help at the polls. Go figure.

Whether it’s the GOP’s desperate spin after their drubbing or they actually believe it, they’re claiming they got a big win from Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York City’s mayoral race. Republicans are betting that painting an East Coast, big-city mayor as a communist and the future of the Democratic Party will taint every Democratic candidate in 2026 and terrify voters.

But Democratic candidates have the literal Trump card to play. In the best of circumstances, it is historically incredibly difficult for any congressional or statewide candidate to distance themselves from a president of their own party. But GOP candidates have this problem on steroids because they can’t even attempt to distance themselves from Trump without suffering his wrath. They are heading into the midterms with a wildly unpopular, bloated, orange albatross around their necks that they have to wear from now until November 2026.

And Americans proved this past Tuesday and will again next fall that the lies, threats, and scare tactics no longer work when the most frightening thing voters are facing is the policies and priorities of a White House and both houses of Congress controlled by the GOP.

---