President Donald Trump has ramped up his inflammatory racist rhetoric in the final days before the pivotal midterm elections that will determine if his corrupt administration will face any oversight from Congress.

Betting that fears of racial minorities will drive Republican voters to the polls, he has centered his closing pitch on a caravan of Central American migrants fleeing violence and poor crop yields in their home countries. He said, without evidence, that the caravan is filled with many gang members and unknown Middle Easterners , dropping the previous pretense (terrorists) to reveal a fear of all members of a minority group. Women dont want them in our country , he added, a not-so-subtle suggestion that the migrants are rapists (similar to a claim he made upon launching his presidential campaign).

Guests on Fox News have speculated that migrants are carrying diseases like leprosy and that the caravan is a plot conceived of by rootless Jewish financiers seeking global domination like George Soros the latter a paranoid conspiracy the president has also entertained. The president followed this up with a blatantly racist advertisement blaming Democrats for murders committed by an undocumented immigrant.

This racist closing pitch is not just rhetorical. The president deployed thousands of U.S. troops to the countrys southern border to repel an invasion. He said that soldiers should shoot any migrant who throws rocks at them. He announced plans for indefinite detention of asylum-seekers . He expressed a desire to repeal the 14th Amendments guarantee of birthright citizenship to all children born on U.S. soil.