Trump reminds us again how dangerous MAGA is to our nation
Trump despicably downplays the horrors of the Holocaust
Reading about the Republican National Committee’s donor retreat held at Mar-a-Lago country club this weekend reminds us that there is nothing redeeming about Donald Trump or MAGA. Nothing!
Trump took the stage Saturday at the GOP donor event to a recording of the national anthem sung by the “J6 Prison Choir” –comprised of people incarcerated for waging the Jan 6 attack to keep Trump in power despite losing the 2020 election. This is far from the first time Trump has kicked off his events by playing this song that celebrates the Jan 6 attackers. MAGA—being the fascist movement that it is--honors those who commit violence on their behalf. That alone should disgust any patriotic American.
But Trump was not close to being done with his vileness. He then launched into a profanity laced tirade which included him despicably downplaying the horrors of The Holocaust by declaring that the Biden administration was “running a Gestapo administration.” This remark from Trump came in the context of the former President venting about being charged with 88 felonies in four different jurisdictions for a range of crimes--from attempting to prevent the transfer of power after losing in 2020 to his current New York city trial in that has been referred to as the “hush money” case but is more accurately about “election fraud” as Manhattan prosecutors have argued.
That is when Trump told the room packed with people who had donated $40,000 or more to the RNC that the Biden administration was akin to the Nazi political police known as the Gestapo. As the Holocaust Encyclopedia details, the Gestapo “organized deportations of Jews from across Europe to ghettos, concentration camps, killing sites, and killing centers.” The Gestapo—in addition to torturing and killing anyone viewed as a threat to the Nazi party--also “perpetrated mass shootings of Jews and others.” By invoking the Gestapo to describe the Biden administration, Trump is diluting the true gravity of the Nazi’s crimes against humanity.
After this vile claim, Trump continued on to state, “And it’s the only thing they have. And it’s the only way they’re going to win, in their opinion, and it’s actually killing them.” Trump added, “But it doesn’t bother me.”
Trump is right about his last line, invoking the Nazis doesn’t bother him. After all, this is the same Trump who caused a firestorm in December when he parroted the language of Adolph Hitler by describing migrants as “poisoning the blood” of the United States. In response, historians pointed to passages in Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf” in which he called for racial purity and said German blood was being “poisoned” by Jews. And only a month before that Trump described his political opponents as “vermin,” which concerned many given that dehumanizing term “has antisemitic connotations and was employed in Nazi rhetoric.”
Trump never apologized for using such language. Instead, in December, he told supporters at a rally in Iowa, "I never read 'Mein Kampf.’” Trump added, Hitler used the term “poisoning the blood" of America "in a much different way.” Trump then repeated the same line of Hitler-esque attack on migrants saying, “It’s true. They're destroying the blood of the country, they're destroying the fabric of our country, and we're going to have to get them out.”
Was there an uproar among the big GOP donors at the event to Trump downplaying the horrors of the Nazis at a time when we are seeing an alarming spike in anti-Semitism? Have Republican leaders spoken out denouncing this? None that we have heard as of yet. (And if past is prologue, don’t expect to hear public criticism of Trump’s words.)
We do know that at the GOP event Saturday, Trump offered anyone who would donate $1 million dollars a chance to speak at the podium. Reportedly, three people took Trump up on his offer. One of those donors—per CNN reporting—claimed that God chose Trump to lead the country. But not a peep about Trump’s vile comments about the Gestapo or his celebrating the Jan 6 attackers by playing the song recorded by the “J6 choir.”
In fact, while Trump was speaking Saturday, RNC co-chair and his daughter in law, Lara, presented the former president with a Billboard Music award for the song celebrating the Jan 6 attackers because it had topped Billboard’s digital sales last year. This all comes the same week a Time magazine interview was published where Trump again praised the Jan 6 attackers—some of whom brutally beat up police officers—as “patriots” (Trump: "I call them the J-6 patriots”) and vowed to consider pardoning every single person still in jail for that attack.
Trump’s celebration of those who waged the Jan 6 attack to keep him in power conjures up Hitler’s tactics after his own attempted coup in 1923 known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler would publicly honor those killed in that failed attempt to seize power by making them martyrs for the cause and celebrating them publicly as heroes. This was effective propaganda to rile up his followers.
Hitler became chancellor of Germany ten years after his attempted coup in 1933, where one of the first pieces of business was the formation of the Gestapo that “ruthlessly eliminated opposition to the Nazis within Germany.” Trump, too, has vowed revenge against political opponents describing them to his supporters as “vermin” and warning that “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within.” Trump has pledged to his supporters that if he wins in 2024, “We will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.”
To be clear, I’m not equating Trump with Hitler—at least not yet. I just want people to be aware that Trump and MAGA are following the classic fascist playbook where those who commit violence on behalf of the movement are celebrated and honored. Trump didn’t invent this strategy, he’s copying it because it has worked in the past.
Trump and MAGA are the greatest threat to our democratic Republic since the Axis powers of World War II. But arguably MAGA is more dangerous because it’s on US soil. Like generations before us, we are now called to defeat this fascist threat. And like them, we must be victorious—our freedoms depend on it.
But I WILL equate trump to Hitler ! He is Hitler reincarnate. Is there anyone who doubts that his round up and camp incarceration of illegals, etc … will get so crowded and complicated that he will finally throw in with the “ovens solution” (responsibility for this suggestion goes to trump ‘s two Gestapo thugs ; Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon). Not far fetched idea here considering everything else trump has said or done that we could previously not have imagined. trump has a final solution also
After his decades of lies, frauds, tricks, deceptions and crimes, you would think that a rational person would be suspicious when he speaks. Instead the "formerly skeptical" Press reports his deceptions as legit. See the Time magazine interview and half-hearted analysis this week. Trump's stupidity and lies were masked by Time's attempt to string together some coherence of his disgusting madness.
When Donald says anything, we must filter it through the Roy Cohn/Roger Stone playbook. There is, without a doubt, one or more tricks in the mix of fact and fiction in any of his claims/stories. What is the real message behind the words? What is his immediate goal? Try to think like Roger Stone. Winning is everything. No rules, no laws, no limits. The ends justify the means.
For a recent example of his deception: Could it be that the immunity petition of the Supreme Court has nothing to do with the Presidency at all? American Presidents have done their jobs (well or not) for 247 years without a SCOTUS dispensation for criminal behavior. Could it be that the primary purpose of the petition is to avoid prosecution for his Jan 6 attempted theft of the Executive Branch? Yet, the questions of some of the Justices, and their delay, to his benefit, indicate they have been gulled. (Not that they would ever admit it.)