For Trump, Domestic Adversaries Are Not Just Wrong, They Are ‘Evil’

When the Pentagon decided not to send anyone to this week’s Aspen Security Forum, an annual bipartisan gathering of national security professionals in the Colorado mountains, President Trump’s appointees explained that they would not participate in discussions with people who subscribe to the “evil of globalism.”

After all the evils that the U.S. military has fought, this may be the first time in its history that it has put globalization on its enemies list. But it is simply following the example of Mr. Trump. Last week, he denounced a reporter as a “very evil person” for asking a question he did not like. This week, he declared that Democrats are “an evil group of people.”

“Evil” is a word getting a lot of airtime in the second Trump term. It is not enough anymore to dislike a journalistic inquiry or disagree with an opposing philosophy. Anyone viewed as critical of the president or insufficiently deferential is wicked. The Trump administration’s efforts to achieve its policy goals are not just an exercise in governance but a holy mission against forces of darkness.

The characterization seeds the ground to justify all sorts of actions that would normally be considered extreme or out of bounds. If Mr. Trump’s adversaries are not just rivals but villains, then he can rationalize going further than any president has in modern times. Last month, he told a cabinet secretary to consider throwing her Biden administration predecessor in prison because of his immigration policy. Last weekend, Mr. Trump said he might strip Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship for the crime of criticizing him.

Demonization, of course, has been at the core of Mr. Trump’s politics since he took the national stage in 2015 to announce his first successful presidential campaign and disparaged many immigrants crossing the border without permission as “rapists” and vowed to block all Muslims from entering the country. His rallies during that campaign rang with “lock her up” chants aimed at his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

But in returning to power, Mr. Trump has been more focused on rooting out the “enemy from within,” as he put it during last year’s campaign. He has devoted enormous energy in his second term to prosecuting perceived enemies, purging career officials deemed disloyal and destroying what he calls “the deep state” that he believes thwarted his policies last time and then persecuted him through criminal prosecutions after he left office.