Donald Trump‘s campaign is defending the former president’s use of the word “vermin” to describe his opponents and detractors after receiving backlash for echoing a term used by brutal authoritarian dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said in a Veterans Day speech on Saturday after using the term in a social media post earlier that same day.
Trump also said in his speech that “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable, competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not going to want to play with us.”
The speech prompted reactions from historians, including John Meacham, who said Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Trump is “lifting” rhetoric from Mussolini and other historic fascists. “And from the Third Reich, and using the 1930s as an example of anything is a fraught enterprise,” Meacham added. “Because to call your opponent vermin, to dehumanize them, is to not only open the door, but to walk through the door toward the most ghastly kinds of crimes.”
>Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, responded to the backlash by calling critics “snowflakes” and promising that “their existence will be crushed” by Trump.
Well, that’s one hell of a rejoinder. These people have appointed themselves the enemies of America, it’s past time to treat them with the appropriate level of alarm rather than cringing normalization.
Hungarian man:
“I was a professor at the university. I heard the same words we have heard today. But I was a fool then. I thought Nazis were crazy people, stupid fanatics. But unfortunately it was not so. You see, they knew that they were not strong enough to conquer a unified country, so they split Germany into small “groups.” They used prejudice as a practical weapon to cripple the nation. Of course, that was not easy to do, they had to work hard to do it. You see, we human beings are not born with prejudices, always they are made for us, made by someone who wants something, remember that when you hear this kind of talk. Someone’s going to get something out of it, and it isn’t going to be you. This is not classroom theory, I saw it happen…”
– US War Department 1943 – Don’t be a Sucker.
Nazi Punks, Fuck off!
I love dissing this orange crayon muncher as much as the next guy but something about this made a chill run down my spine. It’s getting far more dangerous than I ever expected
Donald Trump has succeeded in normalizing what was, not very long ago, career-ending rhetoric.
His supporters are disloyal Americans who do not believe in democracy. I believe he is leading us to civil war.
Do you want to know what’s going to happen? I’ll tell you. After the 2024 election, a certain number of States (yet to be determined) will declare that Trump is the winner and that he is their President. They will secede under his dictatorship.
Anyone living in those States seen as “woke” will be in grave danger.
It is, in fact, deranged and dangerous.
ok, then…
it’s time for everyone to stop pussyfooting around and call the republican party what it is:
Republican party is a terrorist organization
normalize saying this
just the fact he uses enemies to describe opponents is unsettling.
Whats sad is his voters definitely abideby the “all it takes for evil to triump, is for apathetic self interested assholes to do nothing”
Iveonly ever met Republicans, that when confronted w facts or knowledge of what their candidates are doing- plop their head in the sand and say trite shit like “i don’t believe in discussing politics”.
Convict the MFer in 2024. Get it done and lock him up.
Declaring more than 50% of Americans to enemies.
Great patriots.
I’m a proud American first and a liberal second. Nothing about my existence is sad.
Donald, we overthrew your kind in 1776 and 1945. Real Americans don’t want you.
Every article I read is still all “Trump, Trump, Trump”. When is this criminal going to be thrown in jail and left to rot? I’m tired of the chokehold he still has on the media.
Conservatives can’t succeed in a united America and they have no intention of peacefully coexisting. They’re not interested in governing through democracy and public service, they want to either rule or burn it all down
To be fair I’ve been calling Republicans “dog shit” for years.
Well he’s lost my vote. I’m voting for Vermin Supreme!
Not that hard to understand. A democrat says something vaguely reminiscent of Marx, they are a socialist who wants to feed your children to Gay Satan. If a republican verbatim quotes hitler, it’s just boys being boys. It’s not like not rocket science.
>“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,”
Not the first headline where they say Trump said this about his political enemies…It really downplays how broad his dehumanization is. The right cannot define the terms he used, meaning it could apply to anyone that they disagree with or that disagree with them.
Remember when Biden took a massive amount of flack for stating that MAGA elements of the republican party were ‘semi-fascists”.
Just putting that out there.
In 1992 Art Spiegelman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (Special Citation) for his graphic novel, Maus. I was a sophomore in high school, and my language arts teacher had the class read the graphic novel. She went over why it was groundbreaking being a graphic novel winning acclaim and going over the themes and topics of the book. She explicitly pointed out why it was named Maus… after a mouse… a vermin often used to refer to Jewish people as. I was a 15 year old Jewish kid from the Midwest not entirely proud of my religion, as I spent many years being hit head on with Otherism when living in a small towns in Illinois before living amongst a larger, Jewish population in St. Louis.
I bought my own copy of the book and still have it. I’ve introduced it to my daughter. Now I sit here with my daughter in 9th grade, and I’m absolutely fear stricken with the fact that she will be in university in under four years and wants to be a part of the same Jewish sorority I was in. All I can think about is: That makes her a sitting duck on campus living in that house. I know a lot can change in a few years, but will it?
This hate he’s spewing is intentional.. and learned from his parents knees. He’s allowing other people to say the shitty part out loud and giving them the means to spew their hate with their whole chest.
I wonder how much Maus is taught today in public schools, but I know the answer… it’s on the banned book list. I don’t sleep well at night.
Democratic candidates in general and the Biden campaign in particular will be committing political malpractice if they don’t use these words against Trump in a nonstop barrage of ads. They should cut back and forth between images of ordinary Americans that are anti Trump and him saying “vermin”. Make him own it and don’t let anyone forget it or minimize it.
The fact that someone campaigning for president has, what he calls “enemies”should be enough to tell people NEVER to vote for a man like that. Those aren’t enemies, those are your fellow countrymen!
With trump it’s the enemies. You know, the people that don’t see his point of view.
25 comments
It’s them or us. Literally.
***From Rolling Stone:***
Donald Trump‘s campaign is defending the former president’s use of the word “vermin” to describe his opponents and detractors after receiving backlash for echoing a term used by brutal authoritarian dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said in a Veterans Day speech on Saturday after using the term in a social media post earlier that same day.
Trump also said in his speech that “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable, competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not going to want to play with us.”
The speech prompted reactions from historians, including John Meacham, who said Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Trump is “lifting” rhetoric from Mussolini and other historic fascists. “And from the Third Reich, and using the 1930s as an example of anything is a fraught enterprise,” Meacham added. “Because to call your opponent vermin, to dehumanize them, is to not only open the door, but to walk through the door toward the most ghastly kinds of crimes.”
Read more: [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trumps-campaign-respond-vermin-1234876758/](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trumps-campaign-respond-vermin-1234876758/)
>Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, responded to the backlash by calling critics “snowflakes” and promising that “their existence will be crushed” by Trump.
Well, that’s one hell of a rejoinder. These people have appointed themselves the enemies of America, it’s past time to treat them with the appropriate level of alarm rather than cringing normalization.
Hungarian man:
“I was a professor at the university. I heard the same words we have heard today. But I was a fool then. I thought Nazis were crazy people, stupid fanatics. But unfortunately it was not so. You see, they knew that they were not strong enough to conquer a unified country, so they split Germany into small “groups.” They used prejudice as a practical weapon to cripple the nation. Of course, that was not easy to do, they had to work hard to do it. You see, we human beings are not born with prejudices, always they are made for us, made by someone who wants something, remember that when you hear this kind of talk. Someone’s going to get something out of it, and it isn’t going to be you. This is not classroom theory, I saw it happen…”
– US War Department 1943 – Don’t be a Sucker.
Nazi Punks, Fuck off!
I love dissing this orange crayon muncher as much as the next guy but something about this made a chill run down my spine. It’s getting far more dangerous than I ever expected
Donald Trump has succeeded in normalizing what was, not very long ago, career-ending rhetoric.
His supporters are disloyal Americans who do not believe in democracy. I believe he is leading us to civil war.
Do you want to know what’s going to happen? I’ll tell you. After the 2024 election, a certain number of States (yet to be determined) will declare that Trump is the winner and that he is their President. They will secede under his dictatorship.
Anyone living in those States seen as “woke” will be in grave danger.
It is, in fact, deranged and dangerous.
ok, then…
it’s time for everyone to stop pussyfooting around and call the republican party what it is:
Republican party is a terrorist organization
normalize saying this
just the fact he uses enemies to describe opponents is unsettling.
Whats sad is his voters definitely abideby the “all it takes for evil to triump, is for apathetic self interested assholes to do nothing”
Iveonly ever met Republicans, that when confronted w facts or knowledge of what their candidates are doing- plop their head in the sand and say trite shit like “i don’t believe in discussing politics”.
Convict the MFer in 2024. Get it done and lock him up.
Declaring more than 50% of Americans to enemies.
Great patriots.
I’m a proud American first and a liberal second. Nothing about my existence is sad.
Donald, we overthrew your kind in 1776 and 1945. Real Americans don’t want you.
Every article I read is still all “Trump, Trump, Trump”. When is this criminal going to be thrown in jail and left to rot? I’m tired of the chokehold he still has on the media.
Conservatives can’t succeed in a united America and they have no intention of peacefully coexisting. They’re not interested in governing through democracy and public service, they want to either rule or burn it all down
To be fair I’ve been calling Republicans “dog shit” for years.
Well he’s lost my vote. I’m voting for Vermin Supreme!
Not that hard to understand. A democrat says something vaguely reminiscent of Marx, they are a socialist who wants to feed your children to Gay Satan. If a republican verbatim quotes hitler, it’s just boys being boys. It’s not like not rocket science.
>“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,”
Not the first headline where they say Trump said this about his political enemies…It really downplays how broad his dehumanization is. The right cannot define the terms he used, meaning it could apply to anyone that they disagree with or that disagree with them.
Remember when Biden took a massive amount of flack for stating that MAGA elements of the republican party were ‘semi-fascists”.
Just putting that out there.
In 1992 Art Spiegelman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (Special Citation) for his graphic novel, Maus. I was a sophomore in high school, and my language arts teacher had the class read the graphic novel. She went over why it was groundbreaking being a graphic novel winning acclaim and going over the themes and topics of the book. She explicitly pointed out why it was named Maus… after a mouse… a vermin often used to refer to Jewish people as. I was a 15 year old Jewish kid from the Midwest not entirely proud of my religion, as I spent many years being hit head on with Otherism when living in a small towns in Illinois before living amongst a larger, Jewish population in St. Louis.
I bought my own copy of the book and still have it. I’ve introduced it to my daughter. Now I sit here with my daughter in 9th grade, and I’m absolutely fear stricken with the fact that she will be in university in under four years and wants to be a part of the same Jewish sorority I was in. All I can think about is: That makes her a sitting duck on campus living in that house. I know a lot can change in a few years, but will it?
This hate he’s spewing is intentional.. and learned from his parents knees. He’s allowing other people to say the shitty part out loud and giving them the means to spew their hate with their whole chest.
I wonder how much Maus is taught today in public schools, but I know the answer… it’s on the banned book list. I don’t sleep well at night.
Democratic candidates in general and the Biden campaign in particular will be committing political malpractice if they don’t use these words against Trump in a nonstop barrage of ads. They should cut back and forth between images of ordinary Americans that are anti Trump and him saying “vermin”. Make him own it and don’t let anyone forget it or minimize it.
The fact that someone campaigning for president has, what he calls “enemies”should be enough to tell people NEVER to vote for a man like that. Those aren’t enemies, those are your fellow countrymen!
With trump it’s the enemies. You know, the people that don’t see his point of view.