Former President Donald Trump is getting “more inflammatory” in the run-up to Election Day, with his behavior mirroring that of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, say former Obama aides.
On the latest episode of the podcast Pod Save America, hosts Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor and Jon Lovett, who all worked in the White House under former President Barack Obama, discussed Trump’s recent remarks.
With the 2024 election now less than a month away, Favreau described Trump’s rallies as being “dark,” while Vietor compared them to a “fascist wine tasting.”
Vietor then remarked that Trump “always gets more inflammatory the closer we get to an election.”
Former Obama spokesman Vietor said on the podcast that Trump “says the FBI doesn’t want more information about the assassination attempts on his life.”
“This is really, this is like, ‘Infowars, Alex Jones,’ crazy conspiratorial stuff. It’s also very inflammatory. It leads people to take violent acts.”
Alex Jones is a conservative commentator and founder of far-right news website Infowars, which he started in 1999.
He was made infamous through sharing conspiracies about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which ultimately led to him being ordered to pay almost $1.5 billion after families of the victims sued him for defamation.
Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign and Alex Jones via email for comment.
Trump recently remarked on an episode of The Hugh Hewitt Show that there are “a lot of bad genes” among migrants in America.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center on October 14. Trump has been accused of becoming “more inflammatory” in the run up to the election.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
“The rhetoric now has escalated to a very different place,” Vietor said on the podcast. “He’s saying immigrants are animals; he’s saying crime is in their DNA.”
Yesterday, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris launched an ad calling out Trump in relation to his treatment of the Central Park Five.
The Central Park Five were five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of a violent assault and rape of a woman in 1989. They were exonerated in 2002 when another man confessed to the crime.
Trump took out ads in New York City newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty for the teenagers. Trump has claimed as recently as 2019 that there was wrong on both sides, despite the Five’s complete exoneration.
On Instagram, the vice president wrote: “Donald Trump took out a full-page newspaper ad calling for the execution of innocent Black and Latino boys: The Central Park Five. Trump has a long history of racism—and his Project 2025 plan would give him virtually unchecked power over Black Americans’ lives and bodies.”
Vietor says: “I went back, and I looked at his [Trump’s] Central Park Five ad from the eighties.”
He then read the following excerpt from Trump’s ad: “I recently watched a newscast trying to explain some of the anger of these young men. I no longer want to understand their anger. I want them to understand our anger; I want them to be afraid. Criminals must be told that their civil liberties and when an attack on our safety begins.”
“This is like the longest-running thread in the Trump narrative,” Vietor said. “He is a racist, and he wants to punish people who don’t look like him or curtail civil liberties when he thinks a crime was committed.”
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