When Senator Joseph McCarthy died in 1957, he was one of the biggest failures in American political life, an alcoholic wreck censured by his fellow legislators and treated as a pariah by most in his own party, with his very name a byword for demagoguery and character assassination. “McCarthyism” has become a common—indeed too common—accusation today, wielded across the political spectrum whenever there’s a whiff of overreach.

But if anyone in recent American history is deserving of the term, it would be President Donald Trump, who has called congressional Democrats “treasonous” for not clapping during the State of the Union address and has attempted to purge the FBI and Justice Department of those he sees as disloyal conspirators. “Today’s McCarthy figure is not a mere senator, but the president,” Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen argued on Monday. “Still, the modus operandi is similar. McCarthy railed against communists in government and Trump and his allies inveigh against something called ‘the deep state.’” Another Post columnist, Max Boot, on Monday described Trump as “the second coming of ‘Tail Gunner Joe’” (McCarthy’s nickname).

But Trump’s supporters see the president as a victim of McCarthyism. Fox News Sean Hannity has accused Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee of using “McCarthyite tactics” in pushing for the declassification of a memo defending the intelligence-court warrants used to investigate Trump campaign associates. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the following on Friday:

After 2 years of screaming Russia Russia Russia w 0 evidence, unverified sources, debunked dossiers etc... the idea of a dem senator screaming McCarthyism is really laughable right now. Why because A congressional committee wants to make info public? LOL https://t.co/Y6II9zWOjw — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 2, 2018

He elaborated on this view on Fox News on Saturday. “You see the Democratic senators [saying], ‘This is McCarthyism.’ I’m, like, What? You have a guy screaming, ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ with no evidence,” he said. “I mean, the irony is ridiculous at this point.” He added that the Democrats are “left of commie right now”—which is exactly the sort of conflation of liberalism with communism that was McCarthy’s rhetorical hallmark. Even the president himself once claimed to be the victim of McCarthyism, in an accusation against former President Barack Obama that was debunked by the FBI and the National Security Agency.

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

Is Donald Trump the new McCarthy? Or are the Democrats themselves guilty of McCarthyism by suggesting that there was collusion between the president and Russia in the last presidential election?

