Steve Forbes backs Trump's warning: 'Socialism, extreme leftism, antisemitism, it's all the same disease'

Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes, backed President Donald Trump's recent statements about communism as an internal threat to the United States, asserting that the greatest danger to the country does not come from abroad but from its own internal problems.

Forbes stated that he agrees with the message Trump conveyed in his speech at Mount Rushmore, where he warned about the advance of communism and other left-wing movements within the country.

"Whatever you call it, communism, socialism, extreme leftism, antisemitism, it's all the same disease," Forbes said during an interview at the FreedomFest, according to Fox News. The businessman recalled a quote attributed to former President Abraham Lincoln: "It won't be foreign forces that destroy the United States. It'll be things we do internally."

During the conversation, Forbes argued that a segment of the population is dissatisfied with the state of the country and noted that left-wing groups have been more successful in organizing their political message. In his view, free-market advocates must present capitalism not only as a system that generates prosperity, but also as a model based on freedom and individual creativity.

"And one thing that the left has learned is that you try to occupy the high moral ground. Even if you wreck people's lives, kill millions of people under socialism, communism, your intentions were good," he said. 

He also criticized the tendency to attribute many economic problems to capitalism when, he said, they are actually the result of government policies. "What happens is when governments start making mistakes and doing things that people don't like and that hurt people's prospects for getting ahead, upsetting society, they blame it on capitalism. They blame it on free markets. So they help wreck free markets and then say, 'The victim is the cause of it," Forbes said.