Brendan Nyhan

PBS NewsHour interview about Trump's rhetoric

From my interview with PBS NewsHour: 

Brendan Nyhan, Dartmouth College:

In this case, it may have been a metaphor. It's hard to tell with him. He was using that language in the context of a discussion of the auto industry, but his meaning was ambiguous.

Given the way he so frequently calls for or endorses violence, I think it's appropriate to be concerned when he invokes it even in a seemingly metaphorical way.

Geoff Bennett:

Dartmouth College political science professor Brendan Nyhan has closely followed Mr. Trump's commentary about immigrants over the last decade. He says Donald Trump 's rhetoric should be viewed through an historical lens.

Brendan Nyhan:

Donald Trump 's descriptions of people from other countries and other racial and ethnic groups as subhuman animals is the kind of language we see in countries before they have ethnic violence or even genocide. It's the kind of language we see when authoritarian movements rise to power.

He's appealing to the worst aspects of humanity. It's straight out of the textbooks, and we should be very worried with how mundane it now seems.

NPR interview about Trump's rhetoric