Donald Trump grew up in the shadow of the Iron Curtain. Born in 1946, months after Winston Churchill warned of Soviet expansion sweeping across Eastern Europe, he came of age during an era when anticommunist fervor gripped the nation. McCarthy-era witch hunts, nuclear brinkmanship, and existential dread shaped the political landscape of his formative years. Now, 37 years after the Berlin Wall fell, he is resurrecting that old lexicon with renewed force.
In recent high-profile speeches, Trump has identified communism as America's preeminent threat. At Mount Rushmore on July 3, he declared that a generation after defeating the Soviet Union, "there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land." He vowed to "vanquish communists quickly" and "send them into exile."
The rhetoric is not confined to campaign rallies. The State Department released a 100-page report this week titled "Cuba: the Capital of 21st Century Communism," alleging that the Cuban regime has infiltrated the highest reaches of U.S. government and maintains connections to leftist nonprofits, socialist groups, and Marxist organizations across the country.
What fuels Trump's revival of Cold War tropes is the visible rise of Democratic candidates embracing "democratic socialism." New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's electoral success opened the door for others. Darializa Avila Chevalier, backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, ousted veteran congressman Adriano Espaillat in a New York primary in June. Chevalier faced scrutiny over deleted social media posts praising Lenin and Marxist ideology.
The communist label has become a cudgel in Republican hands, but Democrats and their allies dismiss it as inflammatory and historically inaccurate. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat warned on social media that Trump is deploying "the old playbook used with coups and Fascist takeovers." Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a DSA member, called the charge "very silly," noting that democratic socialist policies exist in Germany, Italy, Canada, and the UK.
Yet the picture is more complicated than partisan volleys suggest. Harvey Klehr, a Cold War historian at Emory University, acknowledges that Trump's concerns are not entirely baseless. When the Democratic Socialists of America dropped its original constitutional provision excluding communists in 1982, it opened the door to radical recruitment. Klehr said that "a significant number of people who unapologetically call themselves Marxist-Leninists or communists have moved into DSA and attained some significant positions."
The parallel he draws is to the Trotskyite infiltration of Britain's Labour Party in the early 1980s, which shifted the party leftward and contributed to electoral catastrophe when Margaret Thatcher defeated them decisively. Similar internal tensions now roil DSA ranks, with longtime members concerned about ideological drift.
But whether Trump's communist pitch resonates beyond his base is another question. An Economist/YouGov poll found that only 18 percent of voters view communism as a "major threat" to America, with another 25 percent calling it "minor." Thirty-three percent said it posed no threat at all.
Bill Galston, a Brookings fellow and former Clinton adviser, observed that Trump's framing speaks primarily to aging Americans with memories of the actual Cold War. "Older Americans, those who do have a memory of the cold war, are more responsive to this alleged threat than are younger Americans," Galston said. "He's preaching to the choir here and he knows intuitively who makes up that choir."
Klehr voiced a broader concern. While Trump himself may conflate communism with anything he dislikes, the actual infiltration of the DSA by committed communists represents a genuine problem for democratic health. "It's the same sort of thing that occurred on the political right not that many years ago, when various kinds of rightwing lunatics, neo-Nazis and racists began to move into the Republican party," Klehr said. "I think some of that is happening in the Democratic party, and it's dangerous on both counts."
Author James Rodriguez: "Trump's communist crusade hits differently when one candidate literally praised Lenin on social media,but expect most voters younger than 60 to tune it out as nostalgic noise."
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