Experts Reject Trump's Communist Label for Democrats
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Trump called communism "the biggest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, September 11th" while visiting the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota, branding Democrats "hard core, godless Communists" at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's 2026 policy conference.
- Marc Selverstone, director of presidential studies at UVA's Miller Center and author of a book on international communism, said no major Democratic political figures identify as communists, even those further out on the left, framing the label as a way to "portray Democrats as marginal figures."
- Communist Party USA co-chair Joe Sims said the party has roughly 20,000 members over recent years and confirmed: "I don't know of any of those candidates who are members of the Communist Party or who subscribe to Marxism in the tradition that our party comes from."
- Democratic socialists Graham Platner (Maine Senate primary winner) and Darializa Avila Chevalier (who ousted a five-term New York congressman in the primary) have both faced scrutiny over old social media posts sympathetic to communism, but each has publicly disavowed the label while embracing a social-safety-net agenda within democracy.
- Maurice Isserman of Hamilton College described "godless communism" accusations as "part of the arsenal of the right," linking the current rhetoric to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose 1950s-era chief counsel Roy Cohn later became Trump's mentor in New York real estate.
- White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales defended the rhetoric, saying "the Democrats' embrace of socialism and communism is an existential threat to our country," while DNC rapid response director Kendall Witmer countered that Trump is "grasping at straws" ahead of the midterms.
Why it matters: Fact-checks rarely change campaign messaging, but the breadth of sourcing here is notable: the Communist Party USA's own co-chair, McCarthy-era academic specialists, and the Democratic candidates under scrutiny all separately contradict the framing. The McCarthy-to-Cohn-to-Trump historical thread the piece draws makes the rhetoric's lineage explicit rather than implied, which matters because it reframes the claim as a documented political strategy rather than a substantive policy critique ahead of the midterms.
