Over the weekend at a Veterans Day rally in New Hampshire, Donald Trump vowed to “root out” what he called “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” You know who else referred to their political opponents as vermin? Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
New York University historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat told the Washington Post that “calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively 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. Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.”
A Trump spokesperson denied the accusation, calling it a “ridiculous assertion” from “snowflakes” who are “suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” but Stephen Colbert had another take. “So he’s plagiarizing those guys?” the host said during Monday’s episode of The Late Show. “It’s going to be so awkward when he runs into them in Hell.”
You can watch Colbert’s monologue above (he also covers Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s romance, as all late-night shows must every episode).
(Via the Washington Post)