Speaking on immigration, he referred to members of the gang MS-13 as “animals.” When he was criticized, he said it again and again. “I called them ‘animals’ the other day and I was met with rebuke,” he said. “They said, ‘they’re people.’ They’re not people. They’re animals. We have to be very, very tough.” Dehumanizing people so blatantly is not alien to American public discourse—it was a hallmark of the way the George W. Bush administration talked about terrorists—but Trump uses this weapon more widely and with ever more gusto, inviting his supporters to join him in demonizing the Other.
