Overall Communications Strategy

• Keep the focus on the future we want.
• Contrast our message of hope and community with the violence of the moment, while reminding the public who is instigating violence and division.
• Focus on organizing as the way we unify people, including deep canvassing.
• Use our resources and refocus the conversation on the two futures at play in this election.
• Be smart about what you post on social media, even if it’s on a private account.

Topline Talking Points

• Michigan United brings people together across differences for a country where we all belong, no matter our race, gender, religion, or ZIP code. That’s what organizing is all about.
• In this dangerous moment, we are doubling down on hope. We believe in our vision of the future, and we are working for a country where political violence isn’t the reality.
• We condemn political violence of any kind.
• We condemn the violent attack at the Trump rally this weekend and the violent rhetoric that followed.
• We urge accountability for violent actors or those who threaten or undertake political violence.
• We invite everyone to join us in committing to nonviolence and a democracy that settles differences peacefully.
• We call on Donald Trump and the GOP to reject anyone who incites, threatens, or commits acts of political violence.
• The violent rhetoric from Trump and the MAGA movement have brought us to a dangerous precipice in America.
• Trump and the MAGA movement’s drumbeat of violent rhetoric that encouraged the Jan. 6 insurrection, white nationalists in Charlottesville, and violence against political enemies must end.
• At the RNC, Trump will rally his party around his vision of the future: the Project 2025 plot to take over the federal government and to advocate for its “rule of law” crackdown on opponents. We call on people across the political spectrum to reject the political violence inherent in Project 2025 and its attack on our families, our freedoms, and our future.
• This election is about two futures:
• Trump’s future will divide our country and create a climate of fear and insecurity for the majority of Americans. In the future where Trump wins, he will drive our country into a spiral of unprecedented political violence;
• In the future where Biden wins, threats and acts of political violence will decline and we can better organize our vision for our communities.

More Details

Michigan United brings people together. We call on everyone to recommit to nonviolence and for Trump and the MAGA Republicans to disavow political violence.

• Michigan United believes in bringing people together across differences of race, place, gender, and background to work for solutions to our common problems. Through organizing, we can heal our divisions.
• We are organizing for a country where people’s basic needs are public goods. We push back when politicians try to hand over our well-being to greedy corporations and expose their agenda. We want the public, not a rich and powerful few, in control of our workplaces. We want the ultra-wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share. And we want a real democracy in which we all have a say, no matter what we look like or where we are from.
• Through our deep canvassing program and other tactics, we reach out with empathy to those who disagree with us.
• We condemn political violence of any kind, including the violent attack at the Trump rally this weekend–and the violent rhetoric that followed.
• We call on Trump, the MAGA Republicans, and the people and corporations who fund them, to reject anyone who incites, threatens, or commits acts of political violence.
• Trump himself, personally, repeatedly uses Nazi rhetoric against immigrants and the people he perceives as his enemies.
• Examples: He says that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and that his political opponents are “vermin” that he will “root out.”
• He talks about his next term in terms of “revenge” and “retribution.”
• In his first term, he stoked political violence repeatedly.
• On January 6 when he lost the last election, he instigated the attack on the Capitol and expressed his deep admiration for the attackers.
• Before that, he called the Neo-Nazis and White Christian nationalists who later plowed a car into protestors and murdered Heather Heyer, “very fine people.”
• MAGA Republican candidates and officials excuse and encourage political violence:
• For example, Sen. Cotton egged on vehicular manslaughter against protestors.
• The Christian nationalists encouraged by Trump cast their opponents as being in league with the devil and use religious language to justify any action against Trump’s opponents, including murder.
• Example: North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson told an audience in a small-town church last month that “some folks need killing,” including members of the left.
• And right now, Trump and his allies are plotting a massive assault on our families, our freedoms, and our futures under Project 2025, including using military violence against people who disagree with him.
• Project 2025 calls for using the military against protestors.
• The leader of the behind-the-scenes work on Project 2025 implied violence if their plot met resistance. Kevin Roberts said: “We’re in the process of a second American revolution, which will remain bloodless…if the left allows it to be.”
• Many of the corporations who promised to stop political donations to election deniers after the political violence on Jan. 6 have resumed those donations, including UnitedHealth Group.
• We must not let Trump and his allies use this weekend’s despicable act of violence to escape responsibility for what they have done or what they plan to do. Trump wants a “revenge term” and we have to pick a different future at the ballot box.

The RNC and the Two Futures

This election is about two futures: the one we can work for under Biden, and the future that Trump wants for us.

Note: We have a larger narrative toolkit prepared on the two futures that details our vision, the Trump vision, and what we can work towards under Biden/Harris. Below are short RNC-specific talking points.

Our Future Michigan United is working for a people’s economy and society–a place where all of us, of all genders, races, and backgrounds can thrive. We’re working for:

• an economy that serves the needs of poor and working class people, not billionaires,
• a real multiracial democracy,
• racial and gender justice, and
• a world where we put people and the planet first, not profits for a few.

We believe organizing is the path to the change we want, AND voting lets us choose the organizing terrain.

The RNC and Their Future

• We already know Trump will be the Republican nominee. The RNC is about Trump rallying his party and the MAGA movement around his plot for a takeover of the federal government–Project 2025.
• His plan is an assault on our families, our freedoms, and our future. It’s an agenda designed to divide, attack, and control poor and working class people to enrich Trump, billionaires, and greedy corporations.
• This plot is part of the same plan–and funding–that packed the Supreme Court with billionaire-backed MAGA justices. It’s part of the same plan that led to the MAGA justices on the court overturning Roe v. Wade and turning our health and safety over to greedy corporations.
• They want to cut overtime pay for millions of workers.
• They want to cut Social Security and give Medicare over to greedy corporations.
• They want to gut Medicaid and stop Medicare from negotiating for cheaper prescription drug prices and end protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
• They want to let the government monitor people’s pregnancies and prosecute them if they miscarry, along with denying people access to birth control and abortion services.
• They want to carry out the biggest deportation in U.S. history.
• The list goes on and on.
• They want to divide us against each other using racism, sexism, and fear so we cannot effectively resist their plot to monitor and control every aspect of our lives and turn our country over to the billionaires and greedy corporations.
• Working people of every race, gender, and background must unite, block this future by voting, and by joining efforts to build the future we want.