U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., August 7, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
President Donald Trump is becoming exactly what he is campaigning against in 2026.
First-term Trump official Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff for Homeland Security, wrote on Monday that the president's new campaign is dusting off the old 1950s "red scare" caricatures while adopting a lot of those same policies into his own government.
"Donald Trump himself is a communist, or at least as close to the rulers of past communist regimes as anyone we’ve ever seen hold power in America," Taylor wrote. "I don’t say that in jest. I say it as a former Republican who spent two-and-a-half years inside Trump’s first administration, watching his rule trend away from democracy and toward something darker yet familiar to any student of history. If you strip away the flag pins and look at how Trump actually governs, you find something closer to a Soviet general secretary than to any American president of either party."
Last week, it was revealed that the Trump administration has taken a stake in 30 U.S. corporations. It is $27 billion in government investments "with almost no public transparency on the process, the purpose or the ongoing relationship," said Taylor.
Trump is using the Defense Production Act, which allows the government to control what products companies make. It hasn't been used since the Korean War. "All of a sudden, you have a president starting to command the means of production," Taylor explained.
But that isn't the only example of Trump's special brand of Marxism.
Trump also announced that he's again “considering removing” Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. In a letter repeating his previous claims of "mortgage fraud," Trump is asking to ignore the Supreme Court decision that Cook cannot be removed. The president continues to be miffed over the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates. Not one member of the board of governors voted to lower interest rates at the last meeting, including Trump's own nominee.
"When a ruler seizes the central bank so he can personally direct the flow of money, it’s what’s known as state control of the economy," Taylor explained. Currently, Trump's economy is not doing well. So, it appears he wants to deploy a tactic used "from Weimar Germany to Venezuela." The result, Taylor said, was "hyperinflation" and savings accounts "worth nothing."
Conservatives once warned about a dangerous "command economy," and the Tea Party was part of that movement against the government being involved in health care.
"Now, MAGA candidates are running as full-fledged champions of it, promising to see Trump’s strongman agenda through," said Taylor. "After all, the president is only partway done transforming the U.S. government into his own, personal brand of communism. He needs a compliant Congress to finish the job."
But there are other examples of the Soviet-style command-and-control government. Trump's use of the Justice Department to target his political enemies is one case. Another is FBI Director Kash Patel's efforts to purge the FBI of all agents who touched any investigations into Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is on his own personal war to get rid of generals who don't lend their fealty to Trump. There's government pressure on the press and the DOJ used its power to get subpoenas for the cell phones of reporters.
Taylor said that there's already a national security blacklist that he's on.
Even Trump's slogans, Taylor said, sound like communist campaigns: "The best healthcare in the world! Higher wages! Lower prices! On day one! Groceries down! Energy down! Cleaner cities with everything gleaming! In gold! "
The ex-Trump official said that no leader of a free-market economy could ever make such promises because they'd know that the government can't control such things. "Yet Trump promised them anyway, the way Soviet general secretaries promised record harvests," said Taylor.
He closed by calling on Americans to sound the alarm about Trump's communist tendencies and beat them at the ballot box.