MSNBC contributor and presidential historian Jon Meacham said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that former President Donald Trump was using the language of Nazi Germany.
During a weekend rally, Trump said, “In honor of our great Veterans on Veterans Day, 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. That lie, steal, and cheat on elections.”
Host Joe Scarborough said, “I think he should probably give some pay some royalties to Mussolini’s family trust because when he starts talking about rooting out communists, Marxists, radical left, vermin, destroying the country, it is it in the letter he’s lifting it from Mussolini and other fascists from the past.”
Meacham said, “And from the Third Reich. And we’re using the 1930s as an example of anything is a fraught enterprise.”
He continued, “To call your opponents vermin and to dehumanize them is to not only open the door but to walk through the door toward the most ghastly kinds of crimes. It gives me no pleasure to start off a Monday morning talking about this.”
Meacham added, “A small plea to all of my Republican friends, and I live in Tennessee, so that’s redundant, right? I’ve got Republican friends for all of those folks. Think again. Think anew about this. This is not about the age of the incumbent president. This is not about your opinion of the incumbent vice president of the United States. This is about your candidate’s frontrunner, your party’s frontrunner, who is, in fact, now, as clearly as you can do, is putting American democracy, human rights, the rule of law below his own ambition.”
He concluded, “Just listen to what he says. Listen to what he says and what you have have there is the language of hate, the language that leads to cataclysm.”
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