Trump's 'fascist' rhetoric now sounds 'better in the original German': analyst

Former President Donald Trump has gone past flirting with fascism and now his campaign speeches just sound like something taken straight out of the rise of Nazi Germany, Catherine Rampell warned for The Washington Post on Tuesday.

This has become all too clear as Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), have promoted false claims about Haitian migrants eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio, and pursued the lie even as it resulted in harassment and bomb threats in the community.

"It is hard to recall a senator in recent memory who’s done more to endanger the lives of his own constituents than Vance has. I’m not saying he and Trump actually want to start a modern-day pogrom, but if they did, I’m not sure what they’d be doing differently," wrote Rampell. Vance, for his part, has accused Democrats of inflaming assassination attempts against Trump by calling him a danger to Democracy — but "Given that logic, what does Vance expect to happen to people who are being falsely accused of rape and murder — and who aren’t protected by the Secret Service?"

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Once upon a time, Rampell noted, political discourse had a convention known as "Godwin's Law" that stated no one could win an argument by comparing their opponent to Hitler. But the namesake of that idea, Mike Godwin, now firmly believes Trump should be compared to Hitler, because of his comparisons of migrants to "vermin" and his claims they are "poisoning the blood" of America — two things Hitler himself did extensively.

Trump even has antisemitic instincts that have become clear in recent years, said Rampell: "For instance, he accused American Jews of voting for 'the enemy' and agreed with a radio host that Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, is a 'crappy Jew'" ... and to cap it all, last week, shortly after a Republican gubernatorial candidate was revealed to have expressed pro-Hitler views, Trump took things to their logical conclusion: He preemptively blamed Jews if he performs poorly this November."

These aren't typical things a candidate says to close out the final days of a campaign, Rampell wrote — "But then, as Molly Ivins, once quipped, it probably sounded better in the original German."