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MSNBC host Joe Scarborough accused former President Donald Trump on Monday of going "full-on Hitler" with his recent rhetoric attacking his political enemies.
Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has been widely criticized after he vowed to "root out" his liberal opponents while calling them "vermin" in social media posts and in a Saturday speech in New Hampshire while on the campaign trial.
The remarks include an Veteran's Day post on Truth Social in which Trump pledged to "root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country." Critics have suggested the language used by the former president is reminiscent of that used by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Italian fascist Benito Mussolini against their enemies.
Reacting to the criticism, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Newsweek: "Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House."
Speaking on Monday's edition of Morning Joe, Scarborough suggested that Trump has "always had this fascist talk coming from him" while noting that the former president recently described undocumented immigrants as "poisoning the blood of our country" in an interview.
Scarborough, who previously served as a Republican in the House of Representatives but now identifies as an independent, also referred to the claim that Trump's ancestors had emigrated from Germany, and were formerly called Drumpf in the 1600s.
"Drumpfs came here from Germany when just having a name Drumpf and being from Germany was seen as anti-American and seen as poisoning the bloodstream," Scarborough said. "And now we're just going full-on Hitler talking about vermin."
Echoing the defense given by Cheung regarding the "vermin" comments, Scarborough said that Trump will end up getting "crushed" in the 2024 election because of his controversial rhetoric.
"You look at the language of Donald Trump, you look at what Donald Trump says he's going to do and you go back to Maya Angelou's saying that 'When somebody tells you who they are, believe them the first time.' We have to believe them and I have to believe that this is the most important election probably since 1864," Scarborough said in reference former President Abraham Lincoln's reelection, which took place during the Civil War.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University who has written several books on propaganda and authoritarianism, told The Washington Post on Sunday that calling people "vermin" was a tactic previously used by Hitler and Mussolini to "dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence."
"Trump is also using projection: note that he mentions all kinds of authoritarians 'communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left' to set himself up as the deliverer of freedom," Ben-Ghiat said. "Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship."
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more