Fascist Trump Winks at Nazis With Latest Video
A video published on Donald Trump’s Truth Social account Monday afternoon featuring hypothetical headlines included reference to a “unified Reich” alongside a much larger, bolded headline reading, “What’s Next for America?”
The Trump campaign claims the video was made by a “random account,” according to statements provided to NBC, and that it was republished to Trump’s Truth Social without his knowledge while he was in court for his hush-money trial. The video was left posted for hours and was only removed Tuesday morning.
Trump previously described neo-Nazis who marched in the fatal Unite the Right rally in 2017, carrying tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us,” as “very fine people.” He has made comments echoing Hitler’s Mein Kampf as recently as last year, claiming immigrants are “poisoning the blood of this country.” His past administration and current allies are riddled with white nationalists. It comes as no surprise that a member of his campaign team would pull a DeSantis and “accidentally” publish a video on behalf of Trump infused with a positive reference to Nazi Germany.
The video, which presents as a campaign ad, asks, “What’s next for America? The economy booms. American energy is unleashed, and an end to crushing taxes. The border is closed, and the largest deportation in history is underway. No more wars, as we focus on home. Law and order is restored. The American Dream is back and the best is yet to come.”
Nazi Germany used the term “Reich” to suggest a historical return to previous empires. Following the Holocaust, Reich fell out of usage except in reference to Germany under Hitler. The “unified Reich” headline appears to be pulled from the Wikipedia page for World War I. Beyond that headline, the ad features copy discussing World War I and early twentieth-century war history dated between 1914 and 1918—at the height of Jim Crow, prior to women’s right to vote, and just before the Ku Klux Klan became a mass movement. “Make America great again,” the voiceover on the video declares as it ends, effectively confirming what critics have long said the phrase coined by Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign and repopularized by Trump really means: Make America great again for a select, ultraracist few.