Donald Trump has earned a reputation as someone who publishes radical — and at times, dangerous — content to social media, but as the former president really ought to know by now, he runs into real trouble when he promotes online content created by other people.
It was four years ago next week, for example, when the Republican used social media to promote a video in which one of his supporters said, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” The then-president’s team claimed at the time that he hadn’t watched the full clip before sharing it with the public.
A month later, Trump promoted a different video in which a man in a golf cart with Trump campaign gear was seen shouting, “White power.” The racist language wasn’t hidden deep within a long video — it was audible roughly 10 seconds into the clip — but the official line was that the then-president was unaware of what he was sharing online.
More recently, the former president shared a video via his own social media platform featuring a truck emblazoned with a picture of President Joe Biden tied up and lying on his side.
The list continues to grow. NBC News reported:
Former President Donald Trump’s account shared a video on social media Monday that included reference to a “unified Reich” among possible developments if he were to win re-election in November, drawing criticism from the Biden campaign.
It was midday yesterday when the Republican, in the midst of his ongoing criminal trial, published this item, promoting a 30-second video. (Eventually, the post was taken down from Trump’s platform.)
The ostensible point of the video — which does not appear to have been created by the Trump campaign itself — is to tell the public about all of the great things that would happen if the former president returns to power. All-caps text, emulating front-page newspaper headlines, touts the Republican’s imagined future accomplishments.
But alongside some of the headlines is slightly blurred text that reads: “Industrial strength significantly increased … driven by the creation of a unified Reich.”
Trump posts a new ad foreshadowing a second Trump term that says he will create a “UNIFIED REICH,” echoing Nazi Germany pic.twitter.com/z4ZmMSWuRH
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) May 21, 2024
A New York Times report added that video appears to have recycled “text from reports on World War I, including references to ‘German industrial strength’ and ‘peace through strength.’ One article in the video asserts that Mr. Trump would deport 15 million migrants in a second term, while text onscreen lists the start and end dates of World War I.
“Another headline in the video suggests that Mr. Trump in a second term would reject ‘globalists,’ using a term that has been widely adopted on the far right and that scholars say can be used as a signal of antisemitism.”
The official defense is that an unidentified staffer promoted the video by way of the former president’s account, and the aide didn’t notice the “unified reich” references.
Team Trump’s pushback went on to say, “The real extremist is Joe Biden.” No, really. That was the line. Whether the Republican operation appreciates this or not, Trump hasn’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt in this area. The presumptive GOP nominee has, after all, spent recent months echoing Hitler while lashing out at immigrants, complaining that immigration is “poisoning the blood of our country” and describing migrants as “vermin.” He’s also the candidate who continues to raise the prospect of building new detention camps, creating a temporary “dictatorship,” cracking down on the free press, and pushing ridiculous references to “the Gestapo.” And did I mention that Trump also dined at his glorified country club with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist a couple of years ago? And downplayed the significance of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville? Because he did that, too. “America, stop scrolling and pay attention. Donald Trump is not playing games; he is telling America exactly what he intends to do if he regains power: rule as a dictator over a ‘unified reich,’” James Singer, a spokesperson for Biden’s re-election campaign, said in a statement. “Parroting ‘Mein Kampf’ while you warn of a bloodbath if you lose is the type of unhinged behavior you get from a guy who knows that democracy continues to reject his extreme vision of chaos, division, and violence,” Singer added.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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