Ben Shapiro says President Trump’s tombstone should read: “45th President of the US. He said lots of stuff”. Indeed, Trump speaks frequently and often without the filter most politicians apply.
Trump’s lack of filter is a double-edged sword. We see more of the good and the bad than we do for almost any other politician. Honestly, most of us are irritated when most politicians carefully pick and choose their words, put their fingers into the wind, and stage events to portray an image not aligned with their true nature. Trump, more than most, shows us his true self. Therefore, he comes across as far more genuine than most politicians. His authenticity also means he can relate to the ordinary Americans. Still, Trump could desperately use that filter on occasion. He also comes across as abrasive, rude, and impolite. His off-the-cuff messages are imprecise and easily misconstrued. As a supporter, I recognize he says too much at times and brings criticism upon himself with ill-advised word choices and frequent stream-of-consciousness.
People are upset when I show the positive side of Trump’s personality or deflect some of the criticism of him. How can I possibly support a man who faults are so apparent? How can I support a man who is so dangerous? Their observations may (sometimes) be accurate, but their overall assessment is a major problem. They claim their conclusions are patently obvious for all, but the other side adds too much meaning to his words, meaning that just isn’t there. Their dishonesty regarding Trump is the real problem.
Trump Hates Immigrants?
Trump is portrayed as a man who hates immigrants, yet it is far closer to the truth to say he opposes the excesses of immigration, not immigrants themselves. An acquaintance of mine claims his rhetoric dehumanizes immigrants.
https://sampost.com/2024/6088/the-dehumanizing-of-immigrants
It’s impossible to ignore how much Donald Trump has twisted public thinking about immigrants seeking asylum in the United States. His dehumanization of them by calling them “animals” echoes some of the most troubling historical rhetoric. The parallels to Hitler’s approach, in which minorities were painted as subhuman, are hard to miss.
My father would say this is too cute by half. The animal reference is highlighted below. The last sentence is the portion of the larger text which is shared. Trump was making a point about the impact of immigration on crime, but the full context is generally ignored.
And just a few weeks ago, I met with the grieving family of Laken Riley. You know Laken. She’s, uh, she was incredible, top of her class. Everything was the top. She was the top of everything. She was incredible. I met her parents. Incredible people.
The 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia who was barbarically murdered by an illegal alien animal. Uh, the Democrats said, “Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.” I said no, they’re not humans. They’re not humans, they’re animals.
He labels as animals those few immigrants who repaid America’s openness and generosity to them with heinous and violent acts. Many of us can also be carried away by our anger and passion when recounting such things. Trump does dehumanize a select few individuals, but this is not a blanket hatred for immigrants. I am not “twisted” by this emotional appeal. I am not manipulated to hate all immigrants. I am not swept away by Trump’s brilliant oratory and ignoring the “parallels to Hitler”. What parallels, my friend? I need better examples before drawing parallels.
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So, I asked Trump: What would you do on Day 1?
“Not one thing, many things,” he said. “First thing: Close the border. People are going to come into the country, but they’re going to come in legally.”
Perhaps a vote for Trump is actually in support of immigration, not a general condemnation of immigrants as my acquaintance suggested? How is it Trump dehumanizes all immigrants while at the same time openly advocates for legal immigration?
Trump is Hitler?
The comparisons to Hitler are egregiously hyperbolic. I dislike Trump’s word choice also, but Leftists lose the argument when referring to Hitler.
Hitler said plainly the holocaust was the final solution to the Jewish Question. He advocated for the propagation of one race and the total annihilation of others.
“Everything we admire on this earth today—science and art, technology and inventions—is only the creative product of a few peoples and originally perhaps one race [the “Aryans”]. On them depends the existence of this whole culture. If they perish, the beauty of this earth will sink into the grave with them.” from Mein Kampf, 1925
I don’t see much future for the Americans . . . my feelings against Americanism are feelings of hatred and deep repugnance … everything about the behavior of American society reveals that it’s half judaised and the other half negrified. How can one expect a State like that to hold together? Adolf Hitler
Trump’s “animal” reference may be inappropriate, but it does not come anywhere close to Hitler’s despicable rhetoric and clearly unmistakable evil.
Trump has said a lot of inadvisable stuff. Still, he never called for the propagation of a single race. Has he never called for a holocaust of an entire group of people. He has not shown antipathy toward all immigrants, Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, or any other ethnic group. In fact, he even has Jewish grandchildren and a daughter who converted.
So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally. Donald Trump on Charlottesville riot, August 2017.
Hitler was a Nazi. Trump condemned Nazis. Hitler plunged the entire world into history’s most destructive war. Trump kept America out of wars altogether during his four years. Hitler murdered millions of Jews. Trump honors Jews. What is this comparison based on besides words deliberately taken out of context?
One-channel media grasps at thin reeds to draw those long-sought parallels. Recently, they broadly condemned his use of the word “vermin”, a word Hitler used to describe Jews and others. Apparently this word is now forbidden to all who wish to avoid association with Hitler. I don’t know why it has not been extricated from the dictionary and why I was never warned about this prohibition myself. Once Trump used the word, people smarter than me squared that circle:
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“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,” he told a New Hampshire crowd.
I choose not to label people I dislike “animals” or “vermin”. We are all redeemable. In any case, who are labeled “vermin” by Trump? Leftist thugs, disreputable people, anti-democratic ideologues.
What a wonderful dialogue we have constructed: condemn the use of an inappropriate label (vermin) by using an even more inappropriate label (Hitler).
What exactly does Trump mean by “root out”? To defeat, perhaps? To stop ill intent? NPR does a mile-wide stretch and says it means “Hitler-like”. This type of nonsensical thinking consumes our politics today. I understand why so many tune out.
“What we have witnessed from Trump over the last few weeks is something new,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI. “Trump has clearly crossed into the domain of Nazi ideology openly.”
Sorry, the word “vermin” in a sentence does not equate to embracing Nazi ideology.
Of course, the upcoming election means more insanity. Democrat strategist James Carville compares Trump’s planned speech at Madison Square Garden on October 27 to a Nazi rally there in February 1939.
Trump has announced that he will be giving a speech at Madison Square Garden on October 27th. Please, Google “Madison Square Garden February 10th, 1939” and see what happened there. They are telling you exactly what they’re going to do. They are telling you, “We are going to institute a fascist regime,”
What is the connection between the two events, on different dates, in two completely different eras, for two entirely different purposes? We could just as easily say Donald Trump is invoking Billy Graham. Graham spoke at Madison Square Garden as well.
Carville does not hide his true intent with any sort of façade. He has to know it doesn’t make a lick of sense to discerning folks, yet I am sure this tactic is effective and influences a handful of voters (the ultimate goal). Hillary Clinton (a Carville associate) repeated the same stupid narrative. Keep doubling down on nonsense. Candidate Kamala Harris jumped on the pile next.
“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans. All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is.” Kamala Harris, October 23, 2024
Yes, it would be deeply troubling if Donald Trump invoked Adolf Hitler, but has he really? I haven’t seen it yet.
Kamala Harris and the Democrats say they have yet again found the long sought Holy Grail, but it seems to be another suspect thin reed. what-john-kelly-said-about-Trump General John Kelly, President Trump’s former Chief of Staff, claimed Trump “liked Hitler’s generals” and that he said “Hitler did some good things”.
Which particular good things, General Kelly? Perhaps building the autobahn or starting the Volkswagen company could be considered good things? How about the tactics of Hitler’s general, Erwin Rommel? American General George Patton respected Rommel. Perhaps President Trump watched the movie in which Patton praises Rommel: “you magnificent bastard”? Rommel was also implicated in a plot to kill Hitler. He was executed for his role. Does this give Rommel credibility, someone we can talk about positively? General Kelly’s comments are non-specific, no mention of an inappropriate word and no praise for a specific Hitler action. It is a ton of smoke, but still no fire.
There are always multiple sides to every conflict. President Trump fired General Kelly unceremoniously. Maybe he has an axe to grind? Furthermore, Trump’s comments were supposedly uttered six or seven years ago. Why wait so long, days before an election, to inform us? Were these comments of no concern before today? Has the general been negligent in warning us? There is also no corroboration from others. In addition, others had issues with General Kelly. Jared Kushner, in his biography, said the general was “consistently duplicitous” and that he even shoved his wife during an encounter in the White House.
President Lincoln also had a good deal of backstabbing from subordinates. From his initial days, his cabinet sought to undermine his presidency. The commanding general he fired early in the war, ran against him in the 1864 presidential election. Things have been tough all over it seems.
Who knows what Trump actually said to Kelly? However, I do know one-channel media extravagantly embellishes the story and politicians repeat it ad nauseum to emphasize a point that is not so substantive and not proven. We don’t need to embellish anything Hitler said, and if Trump was a knock-off we wouldn’t need to embellish his language either. Please stop with the comparisons.
Please Stop!
Where is there a direct statement in which Trump broadly condemns all immigrants? Where is the statement that Trump endorses any evil of Adolf Hitler? There are none. There is only connecting of widely dispersed dots that form no actual pattern. One-channel media reports on smoke, but cannot find a fire.
Labeling individuals “vermin”, “animal”, “deplorable”, “Hitler”, “Nazi”, etc. must stop. I say this to all, including President Trump.
The comparisons to Hitler and Nazi are especially toxic. If Trump is a re-incarnation of Hitler, any action can be justified. In fact, such action is invited by the politicians and one-channel media who so carelessly sling their accusations.
This summer, after the first attempted assassination of a presidential candidate in more than a century, President Biden insisted that ‘we cannot allow this violence to be normalized.’ In September, after President Trump escaped yet another close call, Vice President Harris acknowledged that ‘we all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence.’
“These words have proven hollow. In the weeks since that second sobering reminder, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States has only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus. Her most recent and most reckless invocations of the darkest evil of the 20th century seem to dare it to boil over. The Vice President’s words more closely resemble those of President Trump’s second would-be assassin than her own earlier appeal to civility. Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator Mitch McConnell open letter to VP Harris.
If I thought Trump were anything comparable, I would NEVER vote for him. On the other hand, Democrats vile rhetoric regarding Hitler and Nazis is yet another reason this party should never hold power. They have set our nation up for a deeply divisive aftermath to the 2024 election no matter the results.
Every Republican president or presidential candidate in my lifetime has been subjected to similar comparisons. The last ten years, the rhetoric has been ratcheted to further extremes, not only to politicians like Trump, but to all his supporters. I am labeled a fascist or worse for simply sporting a bumper sticker. Our views will never be tolerated by the government if Democrats ever gain full control of the American system. They already openly advocate for shutting down dissenting speech. They already shut down religious worship during COVID. They will keep extending those boundaries, until we say no more.
https://seek-the-truth.com/2022/09/18/the-worst-most-dangerous-speech-ever/ Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. President Joe Biden, September 1, 2022
Hitler was a one-of-a-kind evil. Nobody in American politics: not Donald Trump, not George Bush, not Joe Biden, not Kamala Harris, none of them, compares. Still, the Democrat Party ideology is extremely problematic (I say demonic), but we should not use a broad brush to paint all party supporters, many of whom believe in righteous causes. Stop these repulsive comparisons because you dislike a candidate’s tax policy or their intent to build a wall. Stop appealing to emotion and let us have a reasoned discussion.
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good… Ideology – that is what gives devil doing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Power Seeks to Replace Truth
During the Trump/Harris presidential debate, moderator David Muir, NBC debate moderator, fact checked President Trump by discounting the story of Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs, raised by Trump during the debate.
Subsequently, Wikipedia created a page to debunk Trump’s claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_pet-eating_hoax, complete with the Nazi connection:
The claims began with a local Facebook group post claiming a local cat had been butchered, and spread quickly among far-right and neo-Nazi groups. The claims were then amplified by prominent figures in the American right, most notably Republican Senator and vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance of Ohio, followed by his running mate Donald Trump.
My friends also told me the story was based on hearsay and that “Trump made it up”.
Mr. Muir’s “fact check” was based on a statement from the Springfield City Manager. Yet, the city manager was contradicted by numerous residents Springfield Ohio Pet Snatchers. Going back to March 2024 the issue was raised in a Springfield town hall meeting (and directed to the same city manager). Days before the debate, several other stories surfaced regarding Springfield. Trump was repeating what he had heard in the news. Perhaps residents’ stories were not true, but Trump had far more basis for this claim than VP Harris had for saying President Trump was: “invoking Adolf Hitler”.
In other words, this was already a story well before Trump elevated it. There was even a corroborating 911 call about geese this time being taken from the local pond.
On Tuesday, an Aug. 26 police 911 call from Springfield emerged in which a resident said four Haitian immigrants were off with geese at a local park.
“I’m sitting here, I’m riding on the trail, I’m going to my orientation for my job today, and I see a group of Haitian people, there was about four of ’em, they all had geese in their hands,” the caller said, explaining he saw the Haitians drive off with the birds.
Perhaps it wasn’t a good talking point. Maybe someone else invented the story, but Trump certainly did not. Again, one-channel media reports on smoke but can’t point to a fire. There were no Nazi groups spreading the rumor, only people in Springfield telling their story to media. Trump and Vance simply repeated the negative story which millions of us also heard, a fairly common act for politicians during a campaign.
Should we accept government statements without skepticism, especially when many others are challenging the official position? None of us live in Springfield, so who are we to say who is correct and who is not? Kamala Harris and Donald Trump could have debated the truth of this issue, but it is not appropriate for a moderator to insert himself into the debate when the full truth is elusive.
The phrase “Speak truth to power” used to mean something, but my friends and others are unwilling to challenge the powers that be. Government provides the ultimate truth for them. When I challenge the government position, they say I am doubting reality or engaging in conspiracy theories (or as Wikipedia claims: aligning with neo-Nazis). So, instead we have: “When power speaks, the search for the truth can rest”. Government resolves the debate because they are somehow the source of truth. Case closed. Yet, how often in the recent past have accounts from ordinary folks been juxtaposed with denials from government officials? The government lied repeatedly during COVID. https://seek-the-truth.com/category/covid/. I do not claim to know the whole truth in this instance, but I feel certain there is something to the claims.
In any case, the whole point of the discussion has been lost. Cats and dog are simply a distraction. Importing 20,000 immigrants (or even 20,000 American citizens from another state) into such a small town, is definitely problematic: schools, hospitals, law enforcement, utilities, etc. need to respond to the increase demand for services. Where are all these people to live? It takes time to construct new homes. These are points worth discussion, but instead the conversation devolves into name calling and phony allegations.
And there are immigration problems on a broader scale. We should debate what is the right level of immigration, how to treat immigrants to our country, what we should expect from them, etc.. Trump is defining a problem and proposing solutions. You may disagree with his solutions, but they are not rooted in hatred of immigrants. Even VP Harris recently acknowledged there are major immigration problems (during her interview with Brett Baer on October 16).
We have had a broken immigration system, transcending even Donald Trump’s administration . . . Let’s all be honest about that. I have no pride in saying this is a perfect immigration system. I’ve been clear–I think we all are–that it needs to be fixed.
We have a serious problem with our caustic rhetoric. However, it seems our politicians don’t even believe their own rhetoric. If so, how could they possibly engage in niceties with Hitler? And if they don’t believe their own rhetoric, why should we?
Dave https://seek-the-truth.com/about/
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