When I was 10 years old I wanted to be John Wayne. I walked with his swagger, entered rooms like he entered movie scenes. I even started calling my friends “Pilgrim” and speaking like him. I also used his lines of wisdom like “Courage is being scared to death — but saddling up anyway.”
We know Trump’s wannabes are mostly strong men dictators: Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Viktor Orban, Adolf Hitler, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Saddam Hussein: Trump’s praised all of them and promised that he, too, will be a dictator “on Day One” in office.
But the one he’s copying most is history’s most murderous dictator, Adolph Hitler. Of course, Trump’s worst transgressions pale in comparison to Hitler’s. Rather he’s like an adoring child playing him. He praised Hitler for doing good things and, according to a Trump former chief of staff, had Hitler in mind as a model during his first presidency.
Trump’s first wife, Ivana,, told the press that Trump reads a collection of Hitler’s speeches he keeps by his bed; although that’s hard to believe given that Trump hardly reads or even skims the written word.
Emulation of heroes is common. Children emulate superheroes for their morality, strong sense of justice and protecting those in danger. Jonas Salk built upon the research other scientists to create the polio vaccine. Many Americans followed in the footsteps of civil rights hero Martin Luther King’s peaceful progress towards racial equality.
Trump, on the other hand embraced Hitler’s brutal Gestapo as the template for his ICE brigade. He pardoned all the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to join ICE to beat and murder innocent immigrants and citizens, while masked to hide their identities. Trump also copied Hitler’s racist propaganda to unleash the latent racism that lies dormant in America. He repeatedly warned that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”– a diatribe straight out of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” Most recently, Trump posted a video portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as apes and insisted he had nothing to apologize for.
He also learned from Hitler’s propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels – that people will believe a lie if it is repeated often enough and is so outrageous that people simply cannot believe it is untrue. It worked for Trump. Approximately 70% of Republicans came to believe Trump won the 2020 election in the face of being rejected by the Supreme Court three times, 60 lower federal courts, state election officials in every state, all federal election officials and federal agencies, and Trump’s own Attorney General.
Trump complained that his generals should be more like Hitler’s generals.
Hitler constantly blamed Germany’s problems on other German officials, his opposition, and the press. Trump blamed the press, political opponents, civil servants, judges, and election officials and called them enemies of the people.
Hitler presented himself as the only leader who could save Germany,. Sound familiar? Remember Trump frequently assuring voters “I alone can fix it.”?
Both demanded absolute loyalty above what’s best for country and treated criticism as betrayal rather than dissent and retaliated against those who dissented.
What’s more appalling than Trump’s treachery is that Congressional Republicans tolerate and enable a Hitler wannabe as our president and give him free reign to shame America and destroy the admiration, envy and influence it took us seventy years to earn. While Trump’s not a carbon copy of Hitler, he’s trying to get closer. He shouldn’t be given any more time.
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