The year 2024 presents a pivotal moment where the strength of democracy will be tested across the globe and the rise of militarism in populist politics could further threaten the health of democracy. Populist figures like Donald Trump are increasingly incorporating war metaphors to promote affective polarisation and authoritarian politics amongst the masses. War metaphors are rhetorical devices used in everyday language to communicate abstract ideas using more broadly understood domains like war and to promote societal salience. The analysis of militarism in society and politics is foundational to the Critical Military Studies discipline, however, there has been little engagement with the study of war metaphors and their influence on polarisation in democracies, which this article aims to address. The article adopts Critical Metaphor Analysis by integrating George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory with Critical Discourse Analysis to investigate the omnipresence of war metaphors in the months nearing the United States presidential elections. The article examines Donald Trump’s discourse (N = 533) on the Truth Social platform over a six-month period between 1 January to 30 June 2024 and finds that war metaphors primarily manifest in three ways: language of attack, language of defence, and adoption of militarism and patriotism. It observes that Trump’s use of war metaphors departs from traditional metaphorical language in politics to promote violent and authoritarian politics, which results in growing affective polarisation and eroding democracy in an established political system like the United States.