Donald Trump has built a reputation as someone who posts radical – and sometimes dangerous – content on social media, but as the former president should really know by now, he gets into real trouble when he promotes content created by other people online.
For example, next week marked four years ago 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 had not watched the full clip before sharing it with the public.
A month later, Trump promoted another video showing a man in a golf cart wearing Trump campaign gear shouting “White power.” The racist language wasn’t deeply hidden in a long video — it was audible for about ten seconds in the clip — but the official line was that the then-president didn’t know what he was sharing online.
More recently, the former president shared a video via his own social media platform showing a truck decorated with a photo of President Joe Biden tied up and lying on his side.
The list continues to grow. NBC News reported:
It was yesterday afternoon when the Republican, in the midst of his ongoing criminal trial, published this item promoting a 30-second video. (Ultimately, the post was removed from Trump’s platform.)
The ostensible purpose of the video — which does not appear to have been produced by the Trump campaign itself — is to tell the public about all the big things that would happen if the former president returns to power. All-caps text, mimicking front-page headlines, touts the Republican’s imagined future achievements.
But next to some headlines is a somewhat vague text that reads: “Industrial strength has increased significantly… driven by the creation of a unified Empire.”
Trump Releases New Ad That Foreshadows A Second Trump Term Saying He Will Create A ‘UNIFIED REICH’ Following Nazi Germany pic.twitter.com/z4ZmMSWuRH
— Biden-Harris Headquarters (@BidenHQ) May 21, 2024
A New York Times report added that the video “appears to have recycled text from World War I reports, including references to ‘German industrial strength’ and ‘peace through strength.’ One article in the video claims that Trump would deport 15 million migrants in a second term, while the text on the screen mentions the beginning and end days of World War I.
“Another headline in the video suggests that Mr. Trump would denounce ‘globalists’ in a second term, using a term that has been widely adopted by the far right and that scientists say could be used as a signal of anti-Semitism.”
The official defense is that an unidentified staffer promoted the video through the former president’s account, and that the aide failed to notice the references to the “United Empire.”
Team Trump’s counter-response continued: “The real extremist is Joe Biden.”
No really. That was the line.
Whether the Republican operation appreciates this or not, Trump has not exactly earned the benefit of the doubt on this issue. After all, the presumptive Republican Party nominee has echoed Hitler in recent months, lashing out at immigrants, complaining that immigration is “poisoning the blood of our country” and describing migrants as “vermin.”
He is 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 few 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 doesn’t play games; he is telling America exactly what he plans to do when he regains power: rule as a dictator over a ‘united empire,’” James Singer, a spokesman for Biden’s re-election campaign, said in a statement.
“Recreating Mein Kampf while warning of a bloodbath if you lose is the kind of riotous behavior you get from someone who knows that democracy continues to reject his extreme vision of chaos, division and violence,” Singer added.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
