News Every Day | 03:45

Trump echoes Hitler’s rhetoric ahead of upcoming 'Nazi-esque' rally in New York: columnist

One of former President Donald Trump's final campaign rallies won't happen in one of the seven must-win battleground states, but in deep-blue New York City. And one columnist is drawing parallels between that upcoming rally and a 1939 Nazi gathering.

In a Saturday essay for the Guardian, Sidney Blumenthal — a former advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton — opined that Trump's October 27 rally at Madison Square Garden will likely be his "most unsettling spectacle yet." He further elaborated that the venue Trump chose for the event is the same location used by the Adolf Hitler-supporting German American Bund in 1939.

According to Blumenthal, this is just the latest signal that Trump's MAGA movement has gone deep into the Nazi rabbit hole. He observed that both MAGA and the German American Bund have the "America First" slogan in common, along with the racist and anti-Semitic "Great Replacement" theory.

"The Nazis claimed the mantle of true Americanism and Christian nationalism. Swastikas framed a gigantic portrait of George Washington as the backdrop to the stage," Blumenthal wrote. "From the balcony hung a banner: 'Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America.' 'Wake up!' shouted the Führer of the Bund, Fritz Kuhn, 'you, Aryan, Nordic and Christians, to demand that our government be returned to the people who founded it!'"

Blumenthal noted that Trump's campaign speeches in his third bid for the White House have had noticeably Nazi-like underpinnings. In his essay, the longtime Democratic operative pointed out that Hitler often criticized the "Lügenpresse," or "lying press," just as Trump rails against "fake news" outlets that criticize him. He reminded readers that Trump has threatened the broadcast licenses of both ABC and CBS over their handling of the September 10 debate and Vice President Harris' 60 Minutes interview, respectively.

Additionally, Blumenthal argued that Trump has echoed Hitler's rhetoric about migrants throughout the 2024 campaign. In late 2023, the former president made headlines for saying immigrants — in particular those from Africa and Asia — were "poisoning the blood of our country." In his manifesto, Mein Kampf, Hitler used almost identical phrasing when he wrote: "All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning." Blumenthal wrote that Trump calling immigrants "scum" and "animals" is a Nazi concept.

"[Trump's] language represented the Nazi idea of 'Rassenhygiene' – 'race cleansing' that required purification, not an academic interest in genetics but a program of eugenics for designating inferior races to be isolated or eliminated," he wrote.

This observation is not unique to Blumenthal. The Guardian columnist wrote that General Mark Milley, who Trump himself appointed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019, called the ex-president "fascist to the core" in an interview with famed journalist Bob Woodward.

"No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump," Milley said. "Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country."

Click here to read Blumenthal's essay in its entirety.