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Catherine Rampell: Trump’s ‘socialist’ rhetoric is lazy name-calling from a lazy thinker

President Trump has made fearmongering about “socialism” a key plank of his re-election campaign. It’s more lazy name-calling from a lazy thinker, but this time the lazy name-calling may backfire.

For years, Trump has premised his political pitch on the idea that he alone can protect Americans from the many invaders who wish us harm -- chiefly immigrants, terrorists and globalists. Lately, he's added another boogeyman to the bunch, one that's supposedly homegrown: socialists.

In this year's State of the Union, he declared, "Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country," as if that were ever truly a risk.