President Donald Trump on Friday previewed a midterm election strategy centered on portraying Democrats as a threat to the nation, telling an audience of religious conservatives that the Democratic Party has embraced “godless communists” who target Christianity.
Speaking at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton hotel, Trump seized on recent election victories by candidates aligned with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist. Trump described the winners as “very troubling people” and said without providing evidence that they “want to destroy our country, and they hate our country and our people.”
“The Democratic party is in big trouble,” Trump said. “This is not stopping with New York.”
Republicans have spent months trailing in polls as voters, according to surveys, say Trump has broken campaign promises to lower prices and keep the US out of foreign wars. Party strategists, according to the president’s remarks, see the rise of Mamdani as a political opening — an opportunity to tag the entire Democratic party with the left’s most extreme views.
Trump’s address drew on Cold War language from a period he was too young to experience firsthand: the “red scare” of the mid-20th century. He told the religious conservative crowd, which included several hundred attendees, that “all communists are godless. They do not believe in God.”
“These ruthless communists attack all religions, but in particular Christianity,” Trump said. “They always do. They’re after Christianity more than any other religion.”
The president cited US military intervention in Nigeria to protect persecuted Christian populations — a non-communist country — as an example of his administration’s stance. The reference came as Trump’s administration is engaged in an escalating conflict with Iran.
As MSI previously reported, Trump has faced growing GOP frustration over his handling of the Iran conflict and intelligence matters, with the president responding to critics by saying “I’m the president and you’re not.”
Other news from Friday, as reported by The Guardian and other outlets, included former national security adviser John Bolton pleading guilty to a charge of mishandling classified information, an FDA advisory panel preparing to discuss research peptides, and a federal judge declaring a mistrial in the Palisades fire arson case.