Those of us who have been paying attention clearly see the parallels between what Trump and his administration have been saying and doing and what Hitler and the Nazis said and did in the 1930s, yet members of the mainstream press have been either incapable of connecting the dots or reluctant to do so, for whatever reason. So this has been yet another week when it has been difficult to tell whether most members of the press are simply incapable of grasping and reporting on the reality of the dangers that Trump, his administration, and his Republican enablers present to the survival of many Americans as well as our country, or whether reporters and pundits need someone like Beto O’Rourke to move the Overton Window so that they can discuss matters that have been verboten until now.
We saw this dynamic play out when Beto indicted Trump as a racist after a racist drove ten hours to massacre “Mexicans” in El Paso, and seemingly every reporter needed him to explain why Trump was a racist until Beto finally exclaimed, “Members of the press, what the fuck!” Then again when Beto called Trump a white supremacist. And yet again this week, as Beto has repeated his comparison of Trump’s administration to the Third Reich.
During last Sunday’s “PoliticsNation” on MSNBC, Reverend Al Sharpton asked Beto O’Rourke to clarify whether he was indeed comparing Trump’s administration to the Third Reich, and Beto obliged:
There is so much that is resonant of the Third Reich in this administration, whether it is attempting to ban all people of one religion and saying that Muslims are somehow inherently dangerous or defective or disqualified. Outside Nazi Germany, it’s hard for me to find another modern democracy that had the audacity to say something like this.
And this idea from Goebbels and Hitler that the bigger the lie, and the more often you repeat it, the more likely people are to believe it — that is Donald Trump to a ‘T’.
The things that he says about immigrants — committing crimes, being rapists, being predators and animals, seeking to dehumanize them* — that’s how we get them in cages, that’s how we lost the lives of seven children in our custody and care. Talking about African-American women, duly elected by their constituents, as somehow being less than American, and telling them to go back to their own country. Or calling white supremacists and neo-Nazis and Klansmen ‘very fine people.’
The signal that he is sending is being picked up by Americans who are willing to work on that hatred and racism. And Reverend Sharpton, we saw it brought home to us in El Paso on August 3rd, when someone repeating the president’s own words in his manifesto opened fire on people in El Paso, Texas, killing twenty-two of them in a WalMart on the Saturday before school started that next Monday.
So this is the cost and consequence of Donald Trump.
* First video cuts off here, second video embedded in tweet below.
Then during Monday’s “The Situation Room” on CNN, Wolf Blitzer asked Beto whether his comparing of Trump to Nazis was “going too far,” and Beto turned the question back on Wolf: “Find me a better analogy of another leader of a Western democracy describing all people of one religion as inherently defective or disqualified or dangerous.” And Beto connected the dots from there.
Third Reich section begins approx. 5:52 mark (video link)
Wolf Blitzer: [Y]ou’re also getting some heat right now, some criticism — not just from Republicans, but Democrats as well — for your criticism of the president, comparing him to Nazis and Goebbels and Hitler.
You said the other day in an interview with Al Sharpton, ‘President Trump, perhaps inspired by Goebbels and the propagandists of the Third Reich, seem to employ this tactic that the bigger the lie, the more obscene the injustice, the more dizzying the pace of this bizarre behavior, the less likely you are able to do something about it.’
Is that not going too far, to make a comparison between the President of the United States and the Nazis?
Beto: Find me a better analogy of another leader of a Western democracy describing all people of one religion as inherently defective or disqualified or dangerous. That’s what the president has done when it comes to Muslims, seeking to ban all Muslims from this country.
Repeating the lie that Mexican immigrants pose a violent risk to this country, calling them animals and predators and rapists and criminals. Asking four women of color, elected by their constituents to Congress, to go back to their home country. And having an almost Nuremberg like rally where people are chanting, ‘Send her back.’
Or inviting the kind of violence, based on the racism that he’s inspired, where you have another crowd cheering when someone says, “Shoot the!” when the president asks, ‘What do we do about these immigrants?’
It doesn’t just offend our sensibilities; it poses a violent risk to our fellow Americans: Twenty-two. Shot dead in El Paso, Texas by a gunman. Inspired by the President of the United States.
Wolf interrupts: But you understand the criticism, when you make any comparisons to the Holocaust and the Nazis, that is simply ... most people say, ‘That is unacceptable.’
Beto: It’s the comparison of last resort, and that’s where we are. And I don’t mean the last resort politically, or the last resort in terms of defeating the president in November, but the last resort for this country that is descending into an open racism and intolerance and violence led by the president.
Now, whether it’s … what he said about Muslims or immigrants, or the way he treats women of color in this country. Or the fact that he described Klansmen and Nazis as ‘very fine people.’ We can’t fail to connect the dots and draw the conclusion about the danger that President Trump poses to this country.
Then during The Washington Post Live’s 2020 Candidates series on Wednesday, Robert Costa told Beto that Republicans had been complaining about his comparing Trump’s hate rallies to Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies, then asked how Beto could expect Republicans to work with him when he’s been using language like that. Me: Members of the press, WTF?!
With the patience of a saint, Beto explained why we shouldn’t dance around the truth, then asked yet again: "Outside of the Third Reich, give me another example of a western leader who has called one people of one faith inherently defective or dangerous or disqualified from being successful in that country." [Washington Post’s transcript below; my emphasis]
MR. COSTA: You've brought up how you want to work in a bipartisan way. I was at the Capitol yesterday, just sharing some stories earlier about that. I walked through the Capitol and asked some Republicans about you. They say, well, Congressman O'Rourke has compared Trump rallies to Nuremberg in Nazi Germany. You've used some pretty tough language about President Trump and his supporters. So if you're President of the United States, how do you actually bring Republicans to your side on different issues if you've used that kind of language?
MR. O'ROURKE: I don't think that speaking the truth and calling things by their right names is in any way disqualifying in being able to do work going forward. I think sooner rather than later a majority of Americans, including Republicans, are going to see Trump for who he is and his administration for what it's done — the criminality, the corruption that runs rife through the Trump administration, and the basic breaking of the foundation of American success.
This genius that we are a people of the planet over who have found a home here and are trying to live up to the ideals — though never fully realized — that we are all created equal and we will be treated equal under law. For this President to describe some, based on their ethnicity, as rapists and criminals, to ask four women of color, duly elected by their constituents to the U.S. Congress, to go back to their home country, to try to ban all people of one religion from the shores of a country that is comprised of people from every tradition of faith, every walk of life the planet over, outside of the Third Reich, give me another example of a Western leader who has called one people of one faith inherently defective or dangerous or disqualified from being successful in that country. To threaten civil war, to call members of Congress treasonous, to remind us what we used to do, to spies in the old day, which is death, to kill them for committing treason in this country.
If we just accept that and normalize that and say, you know what, I don't know that he really knows what he's talking about, or I want to make sure that we don't break our ability to work with Republicans, then every single one of us is complicit in exactly what is going to follow. And there is only one destination this path will take us on. And if we do not wake ourselves up to the danger that we face, then this country will die in its sleep. I'm convinced of it.
The video below picks up here as Costa interrupts Beto, asking him to clarify what he means by "die in its sleep," so Beto connects the dots. [My transcript below.]
Beto: You ask yourself when you look at the history of the Third Reich, which is the comparison that I made that you raised just now: how did a modern country — well educated, a source of innovation and ingenuity and moral leadership in the world — descend into that level of barbarity, producing a shame that lives with every single German to this day?
You look at everything that I just enumerated, and we could go into far greater detail about what President Trump has said and has done — the ‘Send her back’ chanting at that rally in North Carolina: chilling to my bone.
Costa: So are we at a 1930s moment?
Beto: In Florida, in May of this year, you know, the president who has warned about the infestation, the invasion, the predators, the animals — dehumanizing language to talk about humans who he’s placed in cages. We’ve lost the lives of seven children in our custody and care.
He’s telling that rally in Florida: ‘What are we going to do about these people who are coming here?’ And someone yells out, ‘Shoot them!’ And that crowd roars in laughter and applause.
And the president, with that shit-eating smirk on his face, smiles and laughs in consent, giving the green light to that killer in Allen, Texas — who drove 600 miles to El Paso with an AK-47, who said that he was going to stop the invasion that he’d been warned about by the President of the United States. That he didn’t want to be replaced as a white man in the United States of America.
And when people in Charlottesville, Virginia were talking about ‘Jews, you will not replace us,’ President Trump said they are ‘very fine people.’
If we fail to connect the dots and draw the conclusion, then we’re going to die in our sleep as a country. We will lose this democracy. We will lose the genius of America: our ability to nonviolently resolve our differences and bring people from the planet over, into our shared success, right here in the country.
So this is a make or break moment for the United States of America. [applause]
Thank you, Beto O’Rourke, for relentlessly speaking out against the open racism and intolerance and violence being fomented by the white supremacist bully occupying the White House.
Please check out Beto’s vision and plans at BetoORourke.com and donate to his campaign, which is powered by people, not PACs or special interests or corporations.
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