Donald Trump needs a new distraction. Presidential hellfire awaits anyone who brings up the Epstein files or mentions the monumental failures of his unauthorized and illegal “emergency war” in Iran. He has run out of Tren de Aragua immigrant gangsters to round up and he has resorted to arresting legal immigrants, a few American citizens, and snatching kids from schools. To date, he has allowed 52 people to die in ICE detention alongside as many as 11 documented fatal shootings since January 20, 2025.
Trump needed a replacement boogeyman, so he dusted off his former lawyer’s playbook and decided that a new Red Scare was in order. The Trump family lawyer for both father (daddy Fred and son Donald), was Roy Cohn. It was Cohn who also represented other shining examples of humanity like Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno and John Gotti. Cohn was the chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt. Together they created one of the most infamous stains on American democracy. Through their efforts, among other atrocities, they manageed to link communism with homosexuality and began a purge of thousands of federal employees from their jobs.
With the infamous Roy Cohn as his mentor, Donald Trump later bragged that he learned from Roy many strategies for accumulating and wielding power. He learned to never admit defeat, to aggressively litigate against his adversaries, and to use the power of exaggerations and lies to his advantage.
With that foundation, today’s Donald Trump wants to paint recent wins by liberal politicians as a move toward communism. Trump isn’t on the November ballot, but his continued ability to reign supreme without pushback would be threatened if republicans lose either the House or the Senate. Without much in the way of political successes to help, and with rising inflation, stagnant wages, manufacturing job losses, falling approval ratings, and the embarrassment of a new “forever war”, he needs a new plan.
He has decided that he needs to brand all efforts to maintain social safety nets as communism. He needs to point the fickle finger of blame somewhere, anywhere. With this in mind, democratic socialism gets painted with the red brush of communism. For those who don’t know the meaning of communism, it is easy to get confused. Even those with some experience with communism, like those born in Cuba who saw Castro’s interpretation firsthand, are easily befuddled.
When many Cubans hear the word communism, their hatred of Castro blinds them from seeing the good in the social programs that gave them a leg-up when they arrived in this country. They hear the word communism and they see nothing but red. They see Castro smiling and taking private property, seizing all means of production, and a state that became the sole employer and dictator of wages.
What many fail to see is that this was accomplished under an authoritarian regime without representative consent. Castro’s social systems were implemented top-down where citizens had no independent labor unions or free press. They fail to see the similarities in the authoritarian dictatorial mandates of Donald Trump who wants to stifle a free press and marginalize labor unions.
Where Trump and Castro differ is that, while both needed dictatorial control, Castro wanted to criminalize wealth accumulation (except for himself and a few close associates), while Trump wants a new Gilded Age with a wide gap between the haves and have-nots. He sees the industrial tycoons of the past like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and the Astor family, as his inspiration for a new High Society.
Trump’s economic model allows for the accumulation of extreme wealth among corporations and billionaires. This “crony capitalism” is oligarchic in nature where he can abuse his presidential authority to enrich favored corporate elites, real estate moguls, and family dynasties. Cuts to social programs are used to fund tax cuts for this wealthy conclave of elites.
In both Castro’s communism and Trump’s oligarchic capitalism, corruption is an accepted means to an end. In neither world do social safety nets have any priority beyond placating the masses. They are two different means to the same end of taking advantage of the middle and lower classes for the benefit of a wealthy few.
The key to success for both is to fool the masses into thinking that an authoritarian regime will look out for them. Eventually, once the proletariat realizes they’ve been had, it is too late. For Trump, his latest way forward is to mischaracterize social safety nets as communism. Nothing could be further from the truth, but, like beauty, truth is in the eye of the beholder. Or as Rudy Gulliani famously said, "The truth is not the truth."
Where communism is an economic ideology aimed at a classless society, within a democracy, social safety nets exist entirely within and for the benefit of a capitalistic framework. These social safety nets provide a pragmatic mechanism for maintaining social peace and economic stability. By protecting individuals from layoffs, technological disruption, or sudden illness, free market capitalism can flourish.
Under Trump’s economic model, power is exercised through right-wing populism within a democratic-capitalist framework while steadily weakening democratic norms. He aims to hollow out federal agencies, install personal loyalists, and use executive power to shield favored domestic industries while punishing corporate political opponents. While Castro used his Marxist-Leninist platform to control all aspects of civilian life with his military, Trump uses ICE army and a militarized DOJ to wield power and enforce his will.
The Russian model of “communism” is closer to the Trumpian version of oligarchic capitalism than any system incorporating social justice. In Russia, the government didn’t fade away as Marx predicted, it grew massive, centralized and all-powerful. Perhaps this is why Trump seems to idolize Vladimir Putin. Neither Putin nor Castro came close to true communism. There was no classless society ruled by the people. Donald Trump is on a similar path with the same goal; authoritarian dictatorship that follows the revised Golden Rule. "He who has the gold, makes the rules."
Don’t be fooled by Red Scare tactics engineered by Roy Cohn’s replacement, Stephen Miller. It is just another distraction designed to divert attention away from rising inflation, a burgeoning national debt, manufacturing job losses, a more expensive and less effective medical care system, a new endless war, and let’s not forget those Epstein files.
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