A video was posted this week to the social media account of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump referenced a phrase “Unified Reich,” promoting much criticism since it mirrors phrases used by Nazi Germany.
On Tuesday, Trump deleted the video from his account.
In the video, that phrase is shown as part of hypothetical news articles that announce Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election. The narrator of the video asks:
“What happens after Donald Trump wins?”
One big headline in the video reads:
“What’s next for America?”
Another reads:
“Industrial strength significantly increased driven by the creation of a Unified Reich.”
In addition, the video predicts that if Trump were to win in November, there would be a big boom to border security with many undocumented immigrants deported, tax cuts and a thriving economy.
After the video was posted to Trump’s campaign, the Biden-Harris campaign slammed the video, saying it was “parroting ‘Mein Kampf,’” which is a book that Hitler wrote.
In a statement, James Singer, a spokesperson for Biden’s campaign, wrote:
“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.’
“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 version of chaos, division and violence.”
The Trump campaign issued a statement to ABC news that said the video didn’t come from his campaign. Instead, it was an online video that a staffer reposted, without noticing the “unified Reich” phrase.
Karoline Leavitt, who serves as the press secretary for Trump’s campaign, said in a statement:
“This was not a campaign video. It was created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word, while the President was in Court.”
The video lived on Trump’s social media page for 18 hours before it was finally removed.
Despite what the Trump campaign says was an oversight by a staffer, the former president has faced criticism in the past for echoing the words of fascist figures or the Nazi Germany regime. At a November rally, for instance, Trump said his political opponents were “vermin” that he’d “root out.”
He’s said many times that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” which many of his critics say mimics the language used by Hitler and other white supremacists.
In his book “Mein Kampf,” HItler famously wrote specifically about this “blood poisoning.”
Trump has said many times that he’s never read “Mein Kampf,” and said he has used that language “in a much different way” than Hitler was.
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, has said in the past that the comparisons to Mussolini and Hitler are a “ridiculous assertion.” He said:
“Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their said, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”
