Donald Trump’s Dog Whistles Are Unmistakable

When someone attacks the messenger rather than the message, they’re usually revealing something.

Friday night in Austin, Texas, the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, fiercely criticized The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, over a recent report about Trump’s troubling attitude toward the military, which he believes should be loyal to him personally. As Goldberg reports, Trump said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” which is both chilling and historically illiterate.

[Read: Trump: ‘I need the kind of generals Hitler had’]

Trump called The Atlantic “a failing magazine run by a guy named Goldberg.” He added that “they were the ones that made up the story about me saying bad things about this, about the soldiers.” That’s a reference to another article that Goldberg published, in September 2020, reporting that then-President Trump had called Americans who died in wars “suckers” and “losers.” Trump’s attack is factually wrong on nearly every count, but it’s still a useful demonstration of Trump’s political methods and aims.

First, some housekeeping: Trump’s own former staffers have confirmed the “suckers” and “losers” reporting on the record. The Atlantic is thriving both journalistically—it has won the magazine industry’s top award three years running—and as a business, attaining profitability this year with more than 1 million subscribers. Nearly the only thing that Trump got right was Goldberg’s name. As in past instances, he emphasized the name in a way that reeked of anti-Semitism. Trump likes to deny allegations of anti-Semitism by pointing to his Jewish family members, but he has a long history of crude, stereotypical remarks about Jews, and in this election he has repeatedly attacked American Jews for not supporting him, saying they will be to blame if he loses.

[Read: Trump: Americans who died in war are ‘suckers’ and ‘losers’]

Trump is attacking the messenger here because he can’t really attack the message. He denies making the remarks, but a pile of other evidence backs up the report. Goldberg’s recent story was closely followed by a New York Times story in which John Kelly, a retired general who served as Trump’s chief of staff, described Trump’s obsession with personal loyalty and desire to use the military against domestic critics. Thirteen other former Trump-administration officials signed a letter backing these accounts up. “President Trump used the terms suckers and losers to describe soldiers who gave their lives in the defense of our country,” Kelly recently told Goldberg. “There are many, many people who have heard him say these things.” Besides, Trump has said himself that he wants to use the military domestically, and he’s disrespected fallen soldiers by trying to use Arlington National Cemetery as a cheap campaign prop.

He’s also employed this kind of attempted bullying before. Four years ago, Trump denied Goldberg’s story about “suckers” and “losers,” but other reporters quickly duplicated the reporting, including Jennifer Griffin of Fox News. Trump quickly (though unsuccessfully) demanded that Fox fire her. The former president has also sporadically railed at Goldberg and The Atlantic since 2020.

[Read: Why Trump’s Arlington debacle is so serious]

Although Trump’s attacks on the press are not new, they have escalated in recent weeks. Trump has said that CBS should lose its broadcast license over a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent. He has pressured Fox News to stop airing ads that are critical of him. He has threatened Google for showing negative stories about him. He has previously vowed to jail reporters.

The point here is not to plead for pity for the poor press. Courageous reporting is courageous because it puts journalists in conflict with powerful people. Anyone who expects adulation all the time should go into a different business. (This also goes for any media owner who might feel tempted to tone down criticism of Trump.)

[Read: The Trump believability gap]

But voters need to understand why Trump is attacking the press, and where it will lead if he is reelected. The future of American democracy is the key question of this election. Trump has left an ample record showing that he is committed neither to the rule of law nor to rule by the people—after all, he tried to steal the last presidential election after he lost it. But many Americans seem to have forgotten what Trump’s presidency was like, or they simply don’t believe that he’ll do the things that he keeps saying, loudly and publicly, that he’ll do.

Stories like Goldberg’s are an impediment to Trump’s return to power because they are vivid depictions of what Trump believes and how he acts. In a country with a free press, voters can hear these things. American voters should carefully listen to what Trump says and know what he has done—and they should have no illusions about the fact that if he wins, Trump will try to make the press less free.