Donald Trump may have tried to scrub his campaign’s much-maligned promotion of a video citing a “unified Reich” from history, but CNN’s Jim Acosta wouldn’t let the campaign ad go so quietly.
In opening CNN Newsroom on Wednesday, Acosta noted the campaign’s short-lived share of a video promising a “unified Reich” should Trump win. (The ad was posted on Trump’s Truth Social account during a bathroom break in his hush-money trial on Monday, remaining on the account for 15 hours before it was taken down on Tuesday.)
Acosta said the term, historically linked to Nazi Germany, was part of Trump’s yearslong “flirtation” with Nazism and went through a laundry list of his past associations with white nationalists and past praise of Adolf Hitler.
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“Trump’s campaign claims it did not create the video and is blaming an oblivious staffer for posting it while Trump was in court,” Acosta said. “But the former president’s flirtation with Nazi rhetoric is nothing new. He’s defended and dined with white nationalists at Mar-a-Lago. He’s told confidants that Hitler, quote, ‘did some good things,’ and he’s used incendiary language to dehumanize political opponents and immigrants, even suggesting, as Adolf Hitler did, that they’re, quote, ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’”
He cited Trump’s past disparagement of immigrants, including his comparisons of them to animals, his unfounded claim that they arrive with diseases, and his use of the word “vermin.”
“That’s not language that echoes Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric. That is Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric,” Acosta said, adding: “Where’s the difference? The truth is, there isn’t one. And when confronted with that reality, Trump, he feigns ignorance, claiming he didn’t know Hitler used those words. Well, now he knows. And regardless, he continues to parrot that language today.”
