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“The cities are rotting and they’re certainly cesspools of blood,” President Donald Trump mentioned whereas working for workplace. Why all of the hate? Illustration: HuffPost; Pictures: Getty
President Donald Trump seems to have it out for American cities.
In each one among his presidential runs, he described life in them as if it have been one thing out of an Nineteen Eighties horror film: “The cities are rotting and they’re certainly cesspools of blood,” he mentioned in 2022, whereas saying his most up-to-date marketing campaign. (Although he added, “We’re going to go and assist them, even when they don’t need the assistance.” How magnanimous!)
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This wasn’t simply free marketing campaign speak. Not too long ago, whereas making deceptive claims about rampant crime in Washington, D.C. (regardless of what he mentioned, it’s really down), Trump prompt he may use the authority of the presidency to carry out a federal “takeover” of main cities just like the nation’s capital and New York Metropolis. (He could also be from there, however he’s not a fan.) And most lately, he threatened Chicago.
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Different American cities, which are likely to lean left and are sometimes dwelling to massive immigrant populations, have gotten failing grades from the president, too: Chicago is “worse than Afghanistan.” Atlanta is a veritable “killing subject.” Plenty of California cities are “struggle zones and ganglands.” D.C. itself he’s beforehand known as a “rat-infested, graffiti-infested shithole.” (Dramatic, however to be trustworthy, he sounds sort of just like Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, who as soon as known as cities “pestilential to the morals, the well being, and the liberties of man.”)
The statements are worlds aside from how Trump describes the “stunning” cities in purple states, the place voters extra reliably vote for him. In a stump speech final October, he bunched up “Indiana and Iowa and Idaho” as a collective and known as them “states that you simply don’t hear an excessive amount of of as a result of they’re so good and so effectively run.”
His administration’s mass-deportation initiative has largely focused Democratic-run cities; ICE has but to achieve extra Trump-friendly industries in Trump-friendly components of the nation.
Deeply blue Los Angeles is a specific fixation for the White Home, with some questioning if it’s as a result of deputy chief of workers Stephen Miller is from the area. Final month, when Nationwide Guard troops have been deployed to L.A. throughout ICE raids, Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem mentioned the Feds have been coming to “liberate” Los Angeles “from the socialists and the burdensome management.” (The Trump administration has additionally signaled that it may ship the navy to much more American cities.)
Had you by no means visited a metropolis and acquired into Trump’s anti-city screeds, you may determine that criminals roam the streets and that protests (or riots, relying on what gentle they’re solid in) are a risk to you, irrespective of what number of miles away you reside.
Nonetheless, 80% of Individuals stay in or round a metropolis. Urbanites are simply as American as anybody who lives within the countryside, and what’s extra, cities drive financial development for everybody. We all profit when cities prosper. So what’s the cope with conservatives maligning cities so arduous? Is that actually politically good? For solutions, we requested political science professors who specialize within the politics of polarization.
Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem joins the ICE operation as she accompanies quite a few federal brokers raiding a house in Huntington Park in Los Angeles, California, on June 13, 2025. In a presser, Noem mentioned the Feds have been coming to “liberate” L.A. “from the socialists and the burdensome management.” Anadolu through Getty Pictures
Disparaging cities is big-time fodder for a cultural struggle that energizes voters.
The tendency to divide the world into “us” and “them” is deeply ingrained within the human psyche. Republicans have mined that for all that it’s price, and such rhetoric reached apogee beneath Trump, mentioned Jonathan Weiler, a professor of world research on the College of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
“On this case, the ‘us’ are good, hardworking, ‘actual’ Individuals, as Sarah Palin put it, who imagine in an America that was rooted in conventional household constructions, respect for authority and protected, healthful communities,” Weiler mentioned.
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The “them,” he mentioned, “are the forces of cultural chaos, ‘ethical decay,’ engaged in a nefarious plot to undermine the healthful America conservatives have lengthy presupposed to advocate for.”
After all, such tropes and anti-urban bias are nothing new. Within the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s, Jerry Falwell’s Ethical Majority engaged in the same city-bashing politics as a result of it performed so successfully with the televangelist’s viewers, Weiler famous.
Trump’s anti-city fixation has parallels to earlier Republicans, like Richard Nixon and George Bush, who in 1988 used internal metropolis crime to draw voters who in any other case may need voted Democratic.
Yphtach Lelkes, an affiliate professor on the Annenberg College for Communication on the College of Pennsylvania, mentioned that framing cities as harmful does greater than increase issues about crime; it alerts that these locations are morally and culturally completely different, even alien from small-town America.
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“It tells rural and suburban voters that cities aren’t simply distant, they’re run by individuals who don’t share their values,” mentioned Lelkes, who co-directs the Polarization Analysis Lab, which seems to be at affective polarization, social belief, and political violence
“That notion fuels anger, disgust, and worry ― feelings which might be highly effective political motivators,” he mentioned. “These emotions can mobilize voters, increase assist for tough-on-crime or authoritarian insurance policies, and create a powerful sense of political urgency.”
A subway prepare strikes on July 10, 2025, in Queens, New York Metropolis ― a metropolis typically maligned by Trump. Anadolu through Getty Pictures
It’s a message largely directed at suburbanites.
When Trump lambasts Los Angeles or Detroit, he’s not talking to the individuals in these cities who detest him and even on to his rural base (although all the higher if the bottom is revved up). It’s really suburbanites he’s hoping to hook, mentioned Kal Munis, an assistant professor of political science at Auburn College in Alabama.
“The suburbs are composed of individuals, each who moved to them to be able to be nearer to town ― former rural and small city people ― and those that moved to them to be able to distance themselves from city cores,” he informed HuffPost.
“It’s this latter class who his message resonates with, since once more, many of those individuals already consciously selected to maneuver out of town, for varied causes, with the literature suggesting crime is commonly a number one consideration for such strikes.”
Numerous anti-city speak is directed to suburbanites, mentioned political scientist Kal Munis, since many of those individuals already consciously selected to maneuver out of town. Michael Warren through Getty Pictures
Race is certainly part of it, however there’s extra to it.
Some have prompt that as a result of cities are ethnically numerous, “internal cities” is a covert approach to discuss race: There’s a protracted historical past in American politics of utilizing phrases like “internal metropolis” as coded language to evoke racial anxieties with out explicitly mentioning race, Lelkes mentioned.
At the moment’s metropolis symbolism goes past that.
Whereas race performs a job, what’s typically going unsaid is a broader rejection of the values cities signify within the fashionable U.S.: variety, progressivism, intellectualism, and dissent.
“It’s a tradition struggle packaged in geography,” Lelkes mentioned.
Under no circumstances is everybody who responds to “metropolis v. nation” rhetoric racist. Many are simply drawn to candidates who promise to revive order and predictability to what appears like a chaotic and altering world.
Nonetheless, that doesn’t imply they will’t be persuaded by “demagogues who visitors in racism and suppose {that a} heavy hand is critical to make them really feel protected once more.” Lelkes mentioned.
Identical to the state’s cities, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is a frequent goal of Trump. Right here, they meet at Los Angeles Worldwide Airport in January throughout Trump’s go to to the Los Angeles area, which had been devastated by the Palisades and Eaton fires. MANDEL NGAN through Getty Pictures
There are parallels to how authoritarian and fascist actions denigrated metropolis life.
Lelkes mentioned there’s additionally a deeper narrative at work ― one with echoes of authoritarian and fascist actions which have traditionally elevated rural life as pure, conventional, and virtuous, whereas casting cities as corrupt, elite and morally decaying.
“That storyline simplifies the political panorama: cities develop into not simply completely different, however harmful; not simply liberal, however illegitimate,” he mentioned. “It helps rework political opponents into cultural enemies.”
A society can harbor and nurture a few of the parts of fascism with out turning into fascist, Weiler famous.
The rightwing populism of Trump (or of Marine Le Pen in France, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, or the AfD in Germany) is “equally characterised by the sorts of us versus them politics, together with a demonization of sure sorts of elites, particularly in academia, the media and the regulation and ethnocentrism that’s particularly centered on immigration,” he mentioned.
A professional-Palestinian protester holds a Palestinian flag in an indication on the College of California Los Angeles on Might 23, 2024 in Los Angeles — a metropolis President Trump has spoken sick of plenty of occasions. VCG through Getty Pictures
Republicans will hold doing it as a result of they don’t essentially want voters in America’s cities.
As economist Richard McGahey notes in his e-book, “Unequal Cities: Overcoming Anti-City Bias to Cut back Inequality in the USA,” when the U.S. was based, it was a rural nation, and as such, many founding paperwork are brazenly hostile to cities. (With guys like aforementioned metropolis hater Jefferson partly working the present, no shock.)
“The hostility in the direction of cities will get constructed into the electoral faculty,” McGahey mentioned in 2023.
Opponents of the Electoral Faculty argue that rural states maintain vastly disproportionate electoral energy: Though city and suburban areas comprise the vast majority of the inhabitants, their political affect is diluted by malapportionment within the Senate and gerrymandering within the Home and state legislatures, Lelkes defined.
“A rural vote can carry extra weight than an city one,” he mentioned. “That enables conservative politicians to win majorities whereas explicitly working towards cities —and the values, demographics, and insurance policies they signify.”
On this context, disparaging cities isn’t simply symbolic — it’s strategic.
“It energizes the agricultural and exurban base with out a lot political value, as a result of these city voters are already packed into districts that gained’t change the electoral math,” Lelkes mentioned.
Whether or not conservatives will finally want to begin courting metropolis dwellers will depend on how the political geography shifts, he mentioned.
“Suburbs are already turning into extra numerous and extra contested, particularly in swing states. If these areas proceed trending Democratic, Republicans might must reasonable their anti-urban messaging to remain aggressive,” he mentioned. “However so long as the present system rewards geographic dispersion, there’s nonetheless a powerful incentive to maintain working towards town ― even when town represents the bulk.”
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