In one of the more striking moments of Wednesday’s NATO summit press conference in Ankara, Turkey, President Donald Trump claimed he would have been history’s most effective communist — and then used that very assertion to illustrate precisely why the ideology is, in his view, so dangerous to the United States and the world.
The remarks came in response to a reporter from NTD and the Epoch Times, who asked Trump what message he has for people living under communist and socialist regimes — as well as for people in Europe and America who may not have realized how close the ideology had come to home.
“I want to get the word out because what’s forming is communism in this country,” Trump said. “Communism’s easy to sell. I would be the greatest communist in history. I’d be right up there with Lenin. I’d be as good as anybody.”
Trump then spelled out precisely why he thinks the ideology is so seductive — and so dangerous. “You’ve got free rent for the rest of your life. What they don’t say is that you’ll be living in squalor in 12 months,” he said. “You’ve got the free house. Would anybody like to have a free house? We’ll take it away from somebody. We’ll give it to you. You’ll have murders all over the place. Communism is a disaster. It’s been proven to be for thousands of years under different names, but same thing.”
The remarks extended a warning Trump has been sounding with increasing frequency heading into the 2026 midterm elections, as a wave of democratic socialist candidates have notched upset victories in Democratic congressional primaries across the country.
Speaking at Mount Rushmore on July 3, Trump warned of a “resurgence of the communist menace in our land,” telling supporters that “there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty.”
The accelerating rhetoric followed a string of victories in New York Democratic primaries from candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist. Trump reacted on Truth Social, writing: “The Communists are finally making their move. I’ve been waiting and preparing for this for a long time. It’s easy to be a Communist — all you have to do is say, ‘I’ll give you everything,’ but that means you’re taking it away from others that have earned it.”
At the NATO press conference Wednesday, Trump broadened the warning to an international audience, explicitly making the case that the threat is no longer just domestic. He pointed to his own popularity with Hispanic voters as evidence that communities with first-hand experience under socialist or communist governments understand the danger instinctively. “One of the reasons I do so well with Hispanic people is a lot of them came from countries that were essentially communist,” he said.
Trump also expressed particular concern about the rhetorical framing used by the left. “When they say ‘social democrats,’ it sounds so nice,” he said. “It’s not nice. It’s a very dangerous term.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the broader administration message, saying in a recent Fox News appearance: “This is not your granddaddy’s Democrat Party. These are communists.” House Speaker Mike Johnson similarly said on Fox News: “It’s communism, socialism — those are deviations of Marxism. This is communism, and it has led to the murder of innocent people, tens of millions of them in the 20th century alone.”
Trump also used the NATO setting to contrast the communist model against what he presented as the unprecedented economic success of the United States under his administration. “What is working is the United States,” he said. “We have more jobs than we’ve ever had. People are making more money than they’ve ever made. I’m talking about workers now. They’re making higher salaries than they’ve ever made before. It’s just the best system.”
He added that communism has never worked and never will — and that the nations that have attempted it serve as cautionary tales, not models. “It’s never worked and it’s not going to work,” he said.
Democratic Socialists of America co-chair Ashik Siddique pushed back on the framing, saying: “It feels to us like words are kind of losing their meaning, and Trump’s attacks on this front are just really falling flat.” The candidates Trump has labeled communists, including Mamdani and others backed by the DSA, generally describe themselves as democratic socialists — a distinction Trump has consistently rejected as meaningless.
The president closed the exchange by revealing that he discusses the communist threat on TikTok, where he said he had recently ranked as the platform’s number one account by viewership. “I talk about it on TikTok and I talk about it everywhere,” Trump said. “And you’re right — it has become international.”