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Trump’s long history of pushing fear

This is not a unique tone for Trump to take, which is why his multiple proclamations Wednesday of not wanting to incite panic seem off-brand for a president desperately trying to win reelection.

His social media platforms are full of claims -- exaggerated or baseless -- that American cities are burning to the ground, “thugs” and lawlessness could take over the suburbs, and that millions -- including foreigners -- could commit voter fraud with mail-in ballots.

And it doesn’t stop with his tweets. In both his campaign rallies and official White House events -- which almost always delve deeply into politics and attacks on his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden -- he doesn’t shy away from using fear to motivate his supporters.

At the same event at the White House Wednesday where he claimed to not want to incite panic as the country's leader, he did so by painting a dark picture of what the United States would look like if Biden was elected president and had the opportunity to nominate Supreme Court justices.

“Radical justices will erase the Second Amendment, silence political speech and require taxpayers to fund extreme late-term abortion,” Trump proclaimed, without providing evidence. “They will give unelected bureaucrats the power to destroy millions of American jobs. They will remove the words ‘under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance. They will unilaterally declare the death penalty unconstitutional, even for the most depraved mass murderers. They will erase national borders, cripple police departments and grant new protections to anarchists, rioters, violent criminals and terrorists.”

Also on Wednesday, in an interview with Fox News, he warned that if Biden wins, \"China will end up owning the United States, owning it\" and that \"you will have a stock market crash the likes of which you've never seen before.\"

Trump has repeatedly made those dire predictions to thousands on the campaign trail and in multiple interviews.

Stoking fear helped send Trump to the White House

Looking even farther back, stoking fear and uncertainty helped propel Trump to the presidency.

“People are scared,” Trump said in 2016 after winning the state of New Jersey in the primaries.

\"PHOTO:
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
PHOTO: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump delivers his acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio on July 21, 2016.
>

His acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that year centered on a theme of fear -- reminiscent of his message today.

“The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life,” Trump said then. “Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country. Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally; some have even been its victims.”

Long before his rise to the presidency, the president loudly stoked fear in the media.

In 1989, Trump placed four full-page ads in New York newspapers, including the New York Times, calling for the death penalty for a group of five Black and Latino teenage boys known as the \"the Central Park Five,\" later judged wrongly convicted of the brutal rape of a woman attacked while jogging in Central Park.

This is the full-page advertisement Donald Trump took out calling for the execution of the Central Park Five.

They were later exonerated by DNA evidence, although President Trump maintains that they are guilty. pic.twitter.com/vspZemnW93

— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) February 10, 2018

Fear as a political force

Using fear, particularly tapping into racist fears, as a political weapon is not an idea Trump originated. Politicians have always played to it.

During the riots of 1968, Richard Nixon emphasized the need for \"law and order.\" Ronald Regan in 1976 played into American's racist view of African Americans by coining the phrase \"welfare queen,\" who he said \"used eighty names, thirty addresses, fifteen telephone numbers, to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans' benefits for four non-existent deceased veterans husbands, as well as welfare.\" In 1988, that same fear of crime and racist attitudes produced George H.W. Bush's infamous \"Willie Horton\" ad.

Trump followed that playbook closely in his 2016 election, and surveys showed that his supporters were more concerned than most becoming victims of crime.

According to a survey done by the Public Religion Research Institute done that year, three-fourths of Trump supporters feared being victims of crime, versus 63 percent overall.

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