Three hours after he saluted the arriving coffins of four service members killed in his unpopular war of choice in Iran, President Donald Trump traveled from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to address a political rally in Marietta, Georgia.

After receiving record boos at the World Cup and the NBA Finals, Trump filled the Wheeler High School gym with the sort of cheers he craves when he announced he had given a ride on Air Force One to one of the fallen’s parents, who happen to live nearby.

The mother and father were in tears over the loss of 25-year-old Lt. Tyler James Feehan. But, for now anyway, they did not appear to be questioning how a son planning on marriage and law school came to be killed by an Iranian missile or drone at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, 6,690 miles from where they now stood.

Many other people across the country were questioning not just Trump’s leadership, but his very sanity. Part of Trump’s plan to counter his more strident political foes became apparent 37 minutes into his hour and 17-minute speech, when he ventured into a variation on the same big lie that his mentor parlayed into early prominence more than seven decades ago.

“The radical left is actively trying to destroy our children’s future with the disaster known as communism,” he told the crowd. “It’s communism.”

Trump had been in grammar school in the early 1950s, when 20-something Roy Cohn served as U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s chief strategist in whipping up the Red Scare. What could accurately be called a witch hunt generated the fear that communists were everywhere, bent on destroying the........

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