‘Fascist’ is a Harris closing argument against Trump. Will the label stick?

“Fascist.”

The word has been tossed around so much lately – mostly by Democrats trying to disqualify former President Donald Trump in the eyes of voters – as to be rendered just another slur in an epic electoral slugfest.

“Fascism” can be a stand-in for “dictatorship” or “autocracy.” Mr. Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, said recently that he believed his former boss’s approach met an online definition of fascism: “a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy.”

At a Washington, D.C., rally Tuesday evening billed as her closing argument, Vice President Kamala Harris called Mr. Trump a “petty tyrant” and called on Americans to “reject the schemes of wannabe dictators.” She spoke from the Ellipse – the very spot near the White House where then-President Trump delivered his Jan. 6, 2021, speech that preceded the storming of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

Trump allies say the accusations of “fascism” are reckless and have endangered Mr. Trump’s safety, inspiring two assassination attempts. Moreover, they say it’s the Biden-Harris administration that has actually governed like fascists, policing speech online and using the legal system to try to take down a political rival.

It’s not clear that the escalation of rhetoric will sway many votes. Polls show that for most voters, the future of American democracy ranks well behind the economy, immigration, and abortion as a voting issue.

But one week before Election Day, with the former president and Vice President Harris locked in a dead heat, any voters who change their minds – or are motivated or de-motivated to cast ballots – could be consequential.

Experts on democracy see value in the Harris team’s decision to end the campaign by laying out the case that Mr. Trump has fascist proclivities.

“The term ‘fascist’ helps to wake people up, so I think it’s worth using it and underlining it,” says Terry Moe, an emeritus professor of political science at Stanford University. “The problem is, half of the population isn’t listening and doesn’t care.”

The Harris campaign is taking a both/and approach – highlighting the vice president’s plans for the economy and warning about “unchecked power” in one 30-second spot.

Potentially more consequential could be the fallout from Mr. Trump’s rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York, where insult comedian Tony Hinchcliffe hurled crude racist jokes and called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.” The Trump campaign went into damage-control mode, issuing a rare defensive statement saying, ”This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

Marco Bello/Reuters

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gestures as he attends a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, Oct. 29, 2024. He has pushed the word "fascist" back at opponent Kamala Harris.

Mr. Trump, who has made gains among Latino voters in polls this cycle, held a rally Tuesday night in Allentown, Pennsylvania – a Puerto Rican-majority city in the nation’s biggest battleground state. He didn’t mention the comedian’s insult.

But President Joe Biden may have helped Mr. Trump Tuesday when he flipped the insult on Trump supporters, appearing to call them “garbage” in virtual remarks to Latino supporters. 

Still, for Democrats, the Madison Square Garden rally added fodder for discussion by providing an easy, if not wholly convincing, analogy to the American Nazi rally staged there in 1939. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the comparison in a CNN interview last week. 

How Trump flouted norms as president

The Harris campaign is hoping that the latest tempest over rhetoric by and around Mr. Trump will heighten scrutiny of how he might govern if reelected. While in office, Mr. Trump flouted a series of long-established presidential norms – everything from maintaining ownership of his business empire to refusing to release his tax returns to speaking approvingly of dictators.

Most significantly, he insisted the 2020 election had been fraudulent, despite a lack of evidence, and sought to overturn his loss – an effort that culminated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by his supporters. But in many instances, he was also blocked by senior advisers from taking actions they deemed reckless, if not illegal or unconstitutional.

In a second term, armed with the knowledge gained from his previous four years in office, some critics warn that Mr. Trump would be a leader unbound.

“There will not be a White House chief of staff in any meaningful sense in a second Trump term,” says Chris Whipple, author of the 2017 book “The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.”

“He will try to find spineless people who will not oppose him, but who will leap when he says ‘jump,’” Mr. Whipple adds.

But even if a second-term President Trump would face fewer constraints, does that mean America is staring at the possibility of out-and-out dictatorship – or full-on fascism? Is U.S. democracy really that brittle?

Mr. Trump has given his opponents plenty of fodder. Since 2022, he has threatened more than 100 times to “investigate, prosecute, imprison, or otherwise punish his perceived opponents,” according to NPR. In a recent interview, he spoke of using the National Guard – or “if really necessary,” the military – to go after “radical left lunatics.”

Perhaps his most scrutinized comment in this vein came last December, when Mr. Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he would not be a dictator – “except for Day 1.”

Trump allies say he was joking. Trump foes say the country should take him at his word. Left in the middle may be voters trying to see reality through all the apocalyptic rhetoric.

Ms. Harris said “yes” when asked in a CNN town hall last week if she agrees with the labeling of Mr. Trump as a “fascist.” She pointed to statements by General Kelly and other senior Trump aides who have used that term to describe their former boss. Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Mr. Trump, told author Bob Woodward that the former president was “fascist to the core.” General Kelly told The Atlantic that Mr. Trump had expressed admiration for Hitler’s generals, a charge Mr. Trump refutes.

At a rally Monday night in Georgia, Mr. Trump seemed to reference the comparisons made by critics to the 1939 Nazi rally. “I’m the opposite of a Nazi,” he said, adding that Democrats were impugning his supporters. “The newest line from Kamala and her campaign is that anyone who isn’t voting for her is a Nazi,” he said. He also threw the fascist label back at Ms. Harris, saying, “She’s a fascist, OK?”

Do voters see a fascist? Do they want a strongman?

It’s not just former aides questioning Mr. Trump’s fitness for another term. The latest ABC News poll, released Oct. 25, finds that 49% of registered voters say Mr. Trump is a fascist, defined as “a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights, and threatens or uses force against their opponents.” Some 22% said the same of Ms. Harris.

But there’s another way to look at the question. Views of Mr. Trump as a “strongman” – like the leaders of other major global powers, including Russia and China – are also prevalent, and could actually help him get elected to another term as president.

A June Washington Post poll in six key states found that more than half of voters “classified as likely to decide the presidential election” said threats to democracy were extremely important to their vote. And of those voters, more trusted Mr. Trump to handle those threats than President Biden, who was then still the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Most of those voters also said they believed that the “guardrails in place to protect democracy” would hold, even if a dictator tried to take control of the United States, according to the report on the poll conducted by the Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. The six states polled were Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia.

As the nation contemplates the possible return of Mr. Trump to power, the question of “guardrails” is central. William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, says that while Mr. Trump wouldn’t staff his White House and other key positions with “traditional conservatives,” the way he did in his first term, he’s still hopeful that the system would hold.

“There are plenty of other checks in play,” says Professor Howell, who’s also director of the Center for Effective Government. A return of Mr. Trump “doesn’t mean the courts, the larger bureaucracy, and Democrats in Congress are going to suddenly become weak-kneed and compliant.”

Editor's note: This article, originally published Oct. 29, was updated Oct. 29 with news from Kamala Harris' speech at the Ellipse in Washington, and Oct. 30 with news of a comment by the president.