The mainstream media are dutifully parroting the Harris/Walz campaign’s claim that Donald Trump’s rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden was a “Nazi” reenactment.
The smear was invented in mid-October by Democratic strategist James Carville and repeated by Hillary Clinton, before being picked up by Gov. Tim Walz (D) on Sunday and repeated by Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday.
The media have not pushed back on the claim; they have amplified it.
This is the same tactic that the media have used against Trump since 2015. There are countless examples, but one of the earliest was in 2015, when Benjy Sarlin published a story titled: “Trump Audience Member Yells Nazi Salute as Protester Removed From Las Vegas Rally.”
What actually happened: a left-wing heckler interrupted a black man speaking onstage, and was removed; an audience member called him a Nazi and yelled “sieg heil” at him, mockingly.
Democrats and the media who support them have tried, for a decade, to link Trump to Nazis, most infamously in the “very fine people” hoax, which falsely claimed that Trump had supported neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when he had actually condemned them.
President Joe Biden based his 2020 campaign on the hoax, and Harris still uses it despite being fact-checked on live television, but it began in the mainstream media, where it survives.
The “Madison Square Garden” hoax relies on a reference to a hitherto-obscure pro-Nazi rally in February 1939 at the old Garden site (there were anti-Nazi rallies, too).
There was no “Nazi” content on Sunday, but the media are hanging on a few jokes by a warmup comedian, one of dozens of speakers.
Many Jews attended the rally; some prayed there; and others endorsed him the next day.
The facts do not matter; the point is the smear. It has been for nearly ten years.
But there are consequences to the lie. After Trump won, unexpectedly, in 2016, panic set in among many Democrats, who had been led to believe that the country really had elected a Nazi. The fact that Trump did not govern like one — that he opened several addresses to Congress by talking about the problem of antisemitism, for example, or passed legislation on criminal justice reform that won an award from a nonpartisan black group — did not matter to critics.
The country is now facing what some analysts are calling a “mental health crisis” if Trump wins again, as Democrats have to reconcile themselves to the reality that, once again, the country has elected a “Nazi” who loves Adolf Hitler.
Instead of challenging the Democrats who make such claims, the media have helped them bring that message to the American people.
The tactic has not changed since 2015; the best that can be said is that fewer people believe it.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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