Washington, DC — Yesterday, at a Las Vegas rally, Donald Trump returned to the same ugly themes he pushed in last week’s first post-conviction rally speech in Arizona. But this time, he spent more time echoing his January 6 rally speech, stressing the need to “stop the steal.” America’s Voice highlighted how the Arizona speech showcased three major threats from the Trump campaign’s immigration focus, which carried over to the Las Vegas rally: (see our fuller analysis HERE).
- Downstream political violence that results from amplifying white nationalist conspiracies like the invasion and great replacement conspiracies
- The threat of unrelenting and indiscriminate mass deportation, which would devastate the economy, and
- Casting immigrants as villains determined to influence our elections as a strategy to erode confidence in American democracy among base Republican voters.
In particular, the following excerpt from the Nevada rally was a revealing snapshot of how Trump’s ugly xenophobia is directly tied to his efforts to sow doubts about election integrity and threaten more political violence in the style of January 6th (and note later in the Las Vegas speech, he referred to the January 6th insurrectionists as “hostages.”)
“For three and half years, the people of Nevada have had a front-row seat to Joe Biden’s evil and criminal obliteration of our southern border … it’s criminal what he has done … all we have to do is stop the steal, then we have it made … stop the steal. We cannot let that happen again. Last week Biden signed an executive order that is pro-invasion…”
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“Peddling dangerous conspiracies and lurid lies about immigrants is both the beating heart of Trump-ism and a central plank in his larger anti-democratic push to pre-invalidate the 2024 results unless they go his way. Trump’s anti-immigrant focus, and repetition of the ‘replacement’ theory lie that non-citizens are voting, is inextricable from his efforts to delegitimize the elections. Trump and his GOP allies are laying the foundation for another Jan. 6 assault if they do not win the elections in November.”
Key Resources
- Read America’s Voice: “Post-Conviction Arizona Rally Shows How Anti-Immigrant Focus Is Central to Trump’s Larger Anti-Democratic Push”
- Read the America’s Voice memo from Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas: “Trump’s Mass-Deportation Plan is the Central Immigration Focus of His 2024 Campaign and Should Be Covered That Way.”
