A recent X post from a campaign account is part of a broader pattern of baseless fearmongering about migrant crime.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
The Trump campaign’s post yesterday about the “Third World” went beyond Trump’s known obsession with migrant crime to highlight an embrace of the “Great Replacement” theory.
An Alarming Embrace
Yesterday, the official Trump War Room campaign account on X posted a picture of a peaceful residential neighborhood, which it captioned “Your Neighborhood Under Trump.” The tranquil image was juxtaposed with a chaotic scene of Black and Hispanic migrants who’d arrived in New York last summer, captioned: “Your Neighborhood Under Kamala.” “Import the third world,” the post declared. “Become the third world.”
Subtle it was not. I include the image below, because the reality is even more disturbing than the description:
This racist post is consistent with the tone that the Trump campaign has taken in recent weeks—one even uglier than that of months and years past—as the former president struggles to gain traction against Kamala Harris. Like Donald Trump himself, the War Room account has a singular obsession: It regularly highlights stories about migrant crime, posting pictures of Black or brown men who have immigrated to the U.S. and been arrested. A necessary note: There is no evidence of a migrant-led crime spike, or of higher crime rates in cities with the greatest numbers of migrants. Research suggests that immigrants are less likely than their native-born counterparts to be arrested. Trump and his campaign’s obsession with crimes committed by migrants—and their relative silence on other dangers Americans face, such as mass shootings—speaks for itself.
The drumbeat seems to have gotten louder this week. Yesterday, the War Room account also reposted a clip of a Fox News segment about a Haitian migrant charged with raping a child, adding, “Life under President Trump: Increased child tax credits. Life under Kamala Harris: Increased child rape.” The list goes on and on.
None of this is new for Trump, who has a long and well-documented history of racist remarks, and whose campaigns have been built on stoking fears of migrants. Indeed, migrant crime has been a consistent Trumpian theme since he came down a golden escalator in 2015 and declared: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” As a candidate in 2015, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” and according to The Washington Post, he referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries” while president. “Why do we need more Haitians, take them out,” he said, according to Washington Post sources who were briefed on a bipartisan meeting on immigration. Trump later denied using the term shithole, but has continued to emphasize and exploit misleading charges about crime committed by immigrants.
Trump has never backed off. His campaign is now pushing that same line, but with a grotesque twist. They are hammering on the theme that it is Trump’s Black female opponent who is responsible for all of this supposed chaos. “Kamala Harris IMPORTS rape and plunder into our communities,” another Trump War Room post declared yesterday. “President Trump will END this carnage and DEPORT these illegal aliens back to where they came from.”
Perhaps even more worrying is that the “neighborhood” post went beyond Trump’s fixation on migrant crime to highlight his campaign’s embrace of the “Great Replacement” theory—the fear that Black and brown migrants will displace white Americans in the voting booth, the workplace, and a neighborhood near you. Once confined to the white-nationalist fringes, the theory was popularized in part by the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who said in 2021 that “the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”
Now Trump’s own campaign is amplifying these fears of a “Third World” takeover. Trump has taken his racism far beyond a dog whistle, and as even a cursory scroll through the War Room account shows, his campaign is not attempting to hide it.
Related:
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Today’s News
- The World Health Organization declared the latest mpox outbreaks—concentrated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo but now appearing in multiple African countries—a global health emergency.
- Donald Trump spoke publicly for the first time about the hacking of his campaign, blaming Iran. (Iran has denied involvement in the hacking.)
- Ernesto intensified into a Category 1 hurricane, lashing Puerto Rico with rainfall this morning and leaving more than 700,000 residents without power on the island.
More From The Atlantic
Evening Read
The People Who Quit Dating
By Faith Hill
Karen Lewis, a therapist in Washington, D.C., talks with a lot of frustrated single people—and she likes to propose that they try a thought exercise.
Imagine you look into a crystal ball. You see that you’ll find your dream partner in, say, 10 years—but not before then. What would you do with that intervening time, freed of the onus to look for love?
I’d finally be able to relax, she often hears. I’d do all the things I’ve been waiting to do …
Lewis, who studied singlehood for years and is the author of With or Without a Man: Single Women Taking Control of Their Lives, doesn’t mean to suggest that anyone should give up on dating—just that they shouldn’t put their life on hold while they do it. That might be harder than it seems, though. Apps rule courtship culture. Finding someone demands swiping through sometimes thousands of options, messaging, arranging a meeting—and then doing it again, and again. That eats up time but also energy, motivation, optimism …
So some people simply … stop.
Culture Break
Read. Michael Taylor’s Impossible Monsters and Edward Dolnick’s Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party both trace a monumental discovery that changed how humans see themselves.
Watch. Dìdi, in theaters now, is a crowd-pleasing portrait of adolescent angst set in the heyday of Myspace and AIM.
Shan Wang contributed to this newsletter.
When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
