Trump’s Pre-Inauguration Rally Should Be Cause For Concern
After Donald Trump incited the attack on the Capitol in 2021, many are questioning whether his upcoming pre-inauguration rally is cause for concern
President-elect Donald Trump is holding a pre-inauguration rally in Washington DC on January 19, the day before his inauguration. Many are wondering whether this rally, like the one just before the attack on the Capitol which happened four years ago, is cause for concern. From what I’m gleaning from social media posts across various smaller market platforms, I would say that it is worrisome, but not for the reasons you’re thinking.
The rally will be at the Capitol One Arena, an indoor facility that holds about 20,000 people. Since Congress has certified the election results, there is no motivation to do anything major at the Capitol like what occurred four years ago. The bigger concern is what is said at the rally. No doubt, every major news media outlet will air it thus making it accessible to hundreds of millions and ensuring his message is heard on a broad scale.
The dog whistles will be loud and clear.
Some of Trump’s cabinet picks give us hints of what it will be like as they have been showing just how emboldened Trump’s team is after the election. Stephen Miller’s social media posts, Tom Homan’s language on all the news shows, and Trump’s own rhetoric have only become more toxic and dangerous. In his recent televised presser, Trump rambled about renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and doubled down on many of his most controversial policy ideas like tariffs, invading Mexico, and mass deportations.
While many will say he’s losing his mind, his public appearances and conversations with the media are calculated and planned. The dog whistles are now just a part of his vocabulary as we saw during the campaign. Surrounded by people like Miller, who has vast experience in online discourse among racists and incels, it’s easy for them to inject bigoted views that counter reality and make them sound legitimate. Let’s face it, Trump is easy to dupe.
Policies driven by the ideas perpetuated in the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory are only becoming more commonplace as lawmakers try to meet far-right politicians in the middle rather than hold their ground. Slowly but surely the country is incrementally drifting to the right and it will be to the detriment of immigrants, trans people, and women in the short term and have a broader and longstanding damaging impact on all of society in the longer term.
The people that Trump surrounded himself with all believe in the crazy conspiracy theories based on the idea that there’s a concerted effort to eliminate the white race. Elon Musk, Homan, and Miller are part of that circle and they don’t care about any of the inhumanity or damage they do to people. They are driven by maintaining a white-centered society while trying to stop the so-called “browning of America” using white male Christian nationalism to do it.
After the recent debacle on social media that had many in the MAGA movement claiming Trump had betrayed them over the discourse about H-1B visas and others screaming about him allegedly appointing Zionists to his cabinet, it would behoove him to come out swinging at the rally. It is my opinion that the Las Vegas bomber is one of those Trumpers who felt betrayed by Trump and Elon Musk and the H-1B debate after Trump took sides with Musk.
To win back those who felt crossed will require using inflammatory rhetoric. We should expect more attacks on Latin American and Caribbean Island immigrants in those efforts. He needs the xenophobic “deport them all” section of the MAGA coalition behind him and their favorite targets are Latinos and anyone who looks Latino. They target Latinos because lawmakers, news media, and civil society only talk about so-called "illegals" in the context of Latin America despite there being millions of others in this country not authorized to be here.
That means the crowd will leave hating the children of immigrants, their parents, and Latino U.S. citizens. As we saw during his last term, several mass shooters killed scores of people and their manifestos used the same language Trump, Texas Governor Greg Abbot, and other prominent voices had previously used in demonizing everyone who isn’t a straight white Christian male.
We can expect more of the same at the rally, only much louder.
While it seems unlikely that another event like the attack on the Capitol will occur, the lasting effects of the rally are expected to cut deep. At a time when the U.S. has more hate groups than ever, police have set another record for police killings (yes, they are connected), and hateful rhetoric is part of everyday language in so much of our lives, Trump’s election victory is setting the country up to be in seemingly constant turmoil for decades to come.
The damage he will likely do to any progress made over the last several decades in the next four years will require decades of work to repair. In other words, he could set us back 100 years or more and that’s scary to think about for so many in the United States. What the Ku Klux Klan sought to do 60 years ago is just mainstream conservative politics today.
I’m a freelance journalist. Find my work at Latino Rebels, Unicorn Riot, The Antagonist Magazine, and more. I’m also on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support my work, become a paid subscriber or donate via Venmo, PayPal, or CashApp.
Yes, that is the scary thing, isn't it?? What the clan hoped to do in the 60s is mainstream nowadays...
Easy to become frozen, knowing a tidal wave is going to come, but we need to stand together to keep us alive. Not looking forward to the inevitable losses, though, gotta admit. It's gonna be a hard fight. 😥 But letting all the progress we made be for nothing is not an option.