Trump's new strategy 'desperate and doomed' as he scrambles to stop slide: analyst

Trump’s Communist Panic Is a Sign of Weakness, Not StrengthThe Old Trick, ReheatedTrump spent the July 4 weekend trying to bury his own problems under a blast of anti-communist hysteria. At Mt. Rushmore, he said “communism” or “communist” 15 times, then kept pounding the same line on Independence Day. The White House joined in on X with the kind of kindergarten absolutism that tells you the argument has already failed: you are either a communist or a patriot, no in-between.That is the entire move. Not policy. Not governing. Not even persuasion in any serious sense. Just a recycled fear word, deployed hard enough to distract from record-low approval numbers, a string of embarrassing public-relations failures, and a presidency that has produced little for ordinary people beyond higher costs and more comfort for the ultrarich.Who Has Power HereTrump has institutional power. That is the part the messaging machine wants obscured. He is not a commentator shouting from the sidelines. He is the president, using the office to redirect attention from his own record.That matters because the target of the attack is not some hidden left-wing takeover. The source makes clear that the supposed threat is a tiny democratic socialist bloc that “gets a lot of attention” but does not hold power. Trump does. His administration does. His public-facing apparatus does. The whole spectacle is a ruling faction trying to launder its failures into patriotic grievance.Misdirection as StrategyThis is not confusion. It is deliberate misdirection.When Trump invokes “communism,” he is not diagnosing a real governing crisis. He is trying to swap the subject. The source points to the obvious reason the tactic is thin: younger voters were not shaped by Cold War panic, and the word does not land the way it once did. Which is precisely why the administration keeps repeating it. When an argument has no traction, repetition becomes a substitute for substance.The White House post is especially revealing. “You can be a communist or you can be a patriot” is not an argument. It is a loyalty test. That is the language of coercion, not persuasion. It narrows political identity into obedience and betrayal because the real goal is not to win a debate. It is to flatten the field of legitimate opposition.The Real Record He Cannot EraseThe source gives away what Trump is actually trying to outrun: economic damage he owns. Voters know he is in power. They know the economy has been made “more comfortable for the ultrarich and more expensive for everyone else.” That is the record. That is the consequence. No amount of 20th-century panic theater can overwrite it.This is the core political pattern. When right-wing rule fails materially, it retreats into symbolic warfare. It inflates phantom enemies, demands ritual patriotism, and hopes the public will forget who sets prices, who signs the orders, and who profits from the damage. The accusations get louder precisely when the governing case gets weaker.The Pattern Beneath the NoiseTrump’s communist rant is not an isolated rhetorical flourish. It is the standard operating procedure of a movement that cannot defend its actual outcomes. It needs enemies with historical baggage because it has no honest account of power, inequality, or decline under its own control.The source is right to call this effort desperate and likely doomed. But the deeper point is worse for Trump than simple ineffectiveness. The man with institutional power is shouting about imaginary subversion because he cannot defend what he has already done with the power he holds. That is not strength. It is the political smell of an administration running on panic, not legitimacy. Get full access to Systemic Error at paulstsmith.substack.com/subscribe