Donald Trump is now openly channeling Hitler. what could go wrong?

on Saturday, both on his crappy app and in a speech, Trump crossed a line

“this vermin must be destroyed. the Jews are our sworn enemies.”
— Adolf Hitler

“we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
— Donald Trump

pity our poor beleaguered national press. they’ve been trying like hell to treat the shitcanning of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism in the United States as if this were just another plain old horse-race election season.

but on Saturday, both on his crappy app and in a speech, Little Donny Fuckface crossed a line and went full Hitler.

Trump’s rat-brain rhetoric was so over the top that even Forbes Magazine — of all places — couldn’t ignore it.

Former President Donald Trump pledged to eliminate political extremist groups that “lie, steal and cheat on elections,” calling them “vermin” during a speech Saturday and in a Truth Social post commemorating Veterans Day—echoing a term Nazis often used in antisemitic propaganda to dehumanize Jews, equating them to parasites who spread disease.

the Washington Post chimed in:

Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini

On Veterans Day, the former president vowed to “root out” his liberal opponents, drawing backlash from historians who say his rhetoric is reminiscent of authoritarians

oh, and check out this lovely bit:

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, told The Post “those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

because nothing says “we’re not fascists” so much as promising to “crush the entire existence” of anyone who calls you a fascist.

it’s a rare day when the entire national media wakes up and does its job. in fact, just about the only sour note came from the New York Times:

“Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech in a Very Different Direction.”

compare that mealy-mouthed bit of malpractice to the WaPo’s name-checking of Hitler and Mussolini right up top in their headline.

holy shit, NY Times, what the fuck are you doing? you’re teaching a master class in how to completely mislead your audience. nicely done — take a victory lap.

(on the NYT web site, the headline has been changed and now reads “In Veterans Day Speech, Trump Promises to ‘Root Out’ the Left.” better, but still very weak tea.)

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Mark Jacob is an author and a former editor at the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times. about a year ago he posted the following thread to not-twitter:

With all the arguments over whether MAGA Republicans are fascists, I reread William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” to see how much the rise of Hitler and the rise of MAGA smell similar. Conclusion: They do. This thread lists 10 ways. Please take a look.

1. A big lie about treachery is used to foment resentment.
Nazis: We didn’t really lose World War I. It was a “stab in the back” by Jews and other “November criminals.”
MAGA: We didn’t really lose the 2020 election. It was a “steal” by politicians and Blacks in big cities.

2. There’s an obsession with purity of the culture.
Nazis: “Racial mixture” was a threat to Aryan culture, Hitler wrote.
MAGA: “Great replacement theory” says immigrants threaten white culture.

3. Chaos is something to be exploited, not addressed.
Nazis: Economic distress is a great political opportunity.
MAGA: Economic distress is a great political opportunity.

4. The super-rich bankroll the right-wing seizure of power.
Nazis: Thanks to I.G. Farben, Deutsche Bank, Thyssen, Krupp, etc.
MAGA: Thanks to the Mercers, Uihleins, DeVos, Thiel, etc.

5. Some people think the fascist threat is overblown.
Nazis: While Hitler posed a major threat, some said he “ceased to be a political danger.” (2 weeks later, he was chancellor.)
MAGA: While Trump poses a major threat, many people think it’s “just politics,” no worries.

that’s half the thread — please go read the whole thing, it’s chilling as fuck.

(also please check out Mark’s substack.)

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and then there’s this:

Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.

sweeping raids and internment camps. huh, where have we seen this before?

and behind the scenes, Project 2025 is currently setting the table so that all this can be implemented the day Trump regains power.

With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state”.

“We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official.

The unprecedented effort is being orchestrated with dozens of right-flank organizations, and represents a changed approach from conservatives, who traditionally have sought to limit the federal government by cutting federal taxes and slashing federal spending.

Instead, Trump-era conservatives want to gut the “administrative state” from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded factotums more eager to fulfill a fascist approach to “governing.”

holy shit, it’s full-blown fascism and they’re not even hiding it. Project 2025 has a web site.

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Donald Trump is panicking — the walls are closing in, his trials are going badly for him (except for the one being presided over by his fangirl Judge Cannon), and he knows he’s losing.

his only hope of avoiding severe consequences is to regain power and order whatever lackey he picks to run the DOJ to quash all prosecutions — and even that won’t help him in New York and Georgia.

so he’s ratcheting up the rhetoric — louder and louder, and ever more bombastic and violent — and now, after flirting with fascism for a very long time, he’s finally gone full Hitler.

at the same time, Trump’s worm-eaten brain continues to deteriorate at an increasing rate, and at long last, the press is finally starting to report on that.

Trump also referenced Obama when he clearly meant Biden, at a rally in Ottumwa, Iowa, on October 1, twice in a Fox News Radio interview on October 11 and three times during a September 15 speech before faith leaders in Washington.

The DeSantis campaign also shared a clip of Trump appearing to confuse former President George W. Bush and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during a September 25 speech in Summerville, South Carolina, and another incident in New Hampshire in October when he said Orban was the “leader of Turkey.”

creeping dementia and the legal system are locked in a race to see who can take Donny down first.

the presidential election is just under a year away. fasten your seat belts.

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