Commentary: Trump is using his racism to regain power. Silence will let him ride bigotry to another term

Donald Trump’s closing campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday was a stunningly racist display where speakers mocked Latinos, Jews and Palestinians, likened the event to a “Nazi rally” and called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” It was capped by a 78-minute speech in which the former president repeatedly attacked the intellect of the first woman of color to lead a major party presidential ticket, calling Vice President Kamala Harris “a vessel” who “can’t put two sentences together.”
In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Trump is treading dangerously familiar ground, spewing a torrent of racist and xenophobic insults, threats and lies as he escalates his attacks on immigrants and non-white Americans.
As a U.S.-born Latino and white man whose father came from Central America, I am angry and disappointed that so many Americans, from everyday people to the most powerful figures, are willing to ignore or downplay Trump’s dehumanizing language and behavior. It is incredibly distressing that so many in our country still don’t think that Trump’s litany of racist remarks, his embrace of neo-Nazi conspiracies, his dictatorial plans for a second term and his vile attacks on immigrants are enough to disqualify him.
As a member of The Times’ editorial board, which has repeatedly and fearlessly made the case that Trump is uniquely dishonest and dangerous to American democracy, it especially stings to see The Times now among those institutions that have chosen the cowardly path of silence.
I am writing this under my own name, and not on behalf of The Times’ editorial board, because of Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. A five-part series of editorials making the case against Trump that was supposed to be published with the Harris endorsement was also spiked. I agree with Mariel Garza, who wrote in her resignation letter as editorials editor last week that in these dangerous times, silence is complicity.
Now is the time to stand resolutely against Trump’s racism and xenophobia, which flows more freely than ever, from the falsehoods he has spread about Haitian migrants eating pets, his calling Harris “retarded” and “low IQ,” and his threats to use the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime statute, to get rid of migrants. His former chief of staff, John Kelly, revealed that while in office, Trump repeatedly made comments praising Adolf Hitler, such as, “You know, Hitler did some good things, too.” Kelly recently warned that Trump meets the definition of a fascist and would rule like a dictator. That should set off every conceivable alarm bell.
Despite it all, Trump is polling within a few points of Harris, who, as a former senator, state attorney general and prosecutor, has spent her career upholding American ideals and is exceptionally qualified to lead. It’s infuriating that so many neighbors, coworkers and peers support a man who has called his political enemies “vermin” and said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” the same language that Hitler and the Nazi Party used to justify the Holocaust.
History is full of examples of authoritarian leaders who used xenophobic and racist rhetoric to stoke fear and hatred and fuel their rise or return to power. Trump is turning up his bigotry because it works.
Trump launched his political career by stoking the embers of white racial resentment. He announced his candidacy 10 years ago by attacking Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” He then called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” and he used his executive authority to begin carrying it out one week after taking office. President Biden revoked those actions on his first day in office.
A second Trump term would be worse, with fewer checks on his power. He’s already said he would bring back his Muslim ban, including barring refugees from Gaza and other “terror-infested areas” and he wants to round up and deport millions of immigrants and even target the removal of people who entered the country legally. He wants to end birthright citizenship.
One-quarter of the U.S. population is either foreign-born or has at least one immigrant parent. That figure, by the way, includes Trump himself — his mother was an immigrant from Scotland — his first wife and his current wife and four of his five children from three marriages. But when he blames immigrants for society’s woes, he’s not referring to white people.
He has questioned why the U.S. should accept Black immigrants from Haiti and “shithole countries” in Africa rather than from “nice” majority-white countries like Norway, Denmark and Switzerland. U.S. citizens, and even members of Congress or the U.S. military, are not spared. He has told four American congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries, and according to recent reporting in the Atlantic, complained in an Oval Office meeting about fulfilling his promise to help pay for the funeral of murdered U.S. Army Private Vanessa Guillén, saying “it doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f— Mexican!”
Trump has a decades-long record of racism and discrimination, and of belittling and demeaning non-white people as dumb, inferior and not real Americans. His political rise came from peddling the racist “birther” lie that the nation’s first Black president was not a natural-born citizen, forcing Barack Obama to release his long-form birth certificate. He has followed the same pattern with the insults he has flung at Harris and by questioning whether she is really Black.
I fear deeply for our country if Trump succeeds in fanning the flames of racial resentment and hatred to regain power. And it pains me that still others remain undecided or stay silent at such a perilous moment for our nation. With the race alarmingly close, it’s time for all Americans of conscience to use their votes and their voices and to stop a hateful demagogue.