President Donald Trump’s rousing Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday evening triggered a CNN analyst, who was offended by the “verbs” Trump used during his speech.
CNN’s “presidential historian” Tim Naftali bemoaned Trump’s “dark” speech in which he spoke about liberating cities from MS-13 thugs and potentially giving drug dealers the death penalty.
“He talked about with glee the roughness of ICE, the way that people were being dragged,” Naftali said after Trump’s speech. “He was using verbs that presidents shouldn’t ever use when discussing justice.”
Naftali added that Trump was “speaking in the kind of language that we hear from authoritarians” by putting up “Singapore as a model of justice.” He said in Singapore gives the death penalty to drug dealers and also whips people.
“So there was a dark side to the speech and it was very painful,” he said, complaining that it was disappointing that Trump’s audience applauded his “dark” remarks. “I think there’s a side to this that is upsetting. Part of it was great performance and part of it was upsetting.”
Naftali, though, warned Democrats that they cannot fight Trump’s Republican Party with their past playbook because Trump has successfully turned it into one that promotes economic nationalism.
“He is turning it into a protectionist party and it’s working,” he said. “The Democrats have to be very careful in how they fight the Republican Party. It’s not one that they’ve met with before.”
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