President Trump sharply escalated his warning about the dangers of communism on Wednesday, saying it poses a bigger threat to the U.S. than both World Wars and the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“I think this country with this thing that’s going on around is in more danger than it was during World War I, World War II,” he said during a press conference at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. “If you talk about September 11, if you talk about Pearl Harbor, that was a big danger.”
“I think this is [bigger], because once one thing that happens when you go communist, you never go back,” he said. “You die in squalor, you die a horrible death. … and it gets very evil and very nasty.”
Mr. Trump’s comments follow the success of democratic socialists and other progressive candidates in Democratic primaries in Colorado, Kentucky, New York, Ohio and Texas. Since those elections, Mr. Trump has opened up a fresh line of attack on Democrats, saying that voting against them is pushing back against communism.
The president called the Democratic candidates “lowlifes.”
“I watch them. I know good people. I know quality people. These are essentially lowlifes,” he said. “When I see what they are talking about, I think they’re very dangerous in many ways.”
Since the emergence of the democratic socialists, Mr. Trump has repeatedly invoked communism in his speeches and other public remarks. During his speech at Mount Rushmore celebrating America’s 250th anniversary, Mr. Trump called communism “the enemy of July 4, 1776.”
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