Trump rails against 'radical socialist' Democrats in blistering op-ed

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• President Donald Trump wrote a blistering op-ed in USA Today on Wednesday ahead of the midterm elections in November.
• In it, he attacks Democrats as "radical socialists", accusing them of being a great danger to "every single citizen".
• Trump says Democrats will try to take over healthcare and then push for government takeovers of other private sectors in a push for "open-borders socialism."
• Trump rails against the socialists he warns could destroy America, but actually his op-ed echoes longstanding Republican concerns about the Democrats' big-government approach.

President Donald Trump wrote a blistering op-ed in USA Today on Wednesday attacking Democrats as "radical socialists", and accusing them of being a great danger to "every single citizen" before the midterm elections set for November.

Trump's rare opinion column rails against Democrats' proposals for health care, which he paints as a rip off for US seniors who have paid into the existing medicare system their whole lives.

The president homes in specifically on the libertarian Mercatus Center finding that Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" plan would cost the federal government an additional $32.6 trillion over 10 years.

But the report also found that Sanders' plan would create savings that push down the cost of healthcare, and provide more than 30 million uninsured Americans access to healthcare.

"Government-run health care is just the beginning," Trump's op-ed reads. "Democrats are also pushing massive government control of education, private-sector businesses and other major sectors of the US economy."

"Every single citizen will be harmed by such a radical shift in American culture and life," Trump wrote.

While the Democratic party has seen a rise in self-identified socialists running for, and winning, seats, the party at large remains largely committed to a free market economy. In the US, the term socialism often becomes conflated with public welfare programs run from tax revenues generated by free market enterprise, as opposed to a system with solely state-owned businesses.

Some members of the Democratic party do support an overthrow of capitalism, but have not reached national office on that platform.

The majority of the complaints Trump brings against Democrats actually echo long-standing Republican gripes against the big-government approach of their opposition, though it's delivered in his signature bombastic tone.

Read Trump's full op-ed at USA Today here »