Last weekend, Donald Trump caused a stir when he stated that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” during a stump speech in New Hampshire. That the phrase is almost a verbatim quote from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was not lost on people, and the former/aspiring president has spent much of this week attempting to defend himself and prove there was nothing nefarious—or fascist—in what he was saying.
But anyone keeping track of Trump’s seemingly endless gaffes and political missteps the way Seth Meyers does knows that last week’s rally was hardly the first time the reality TV star and former president has offered praise for one of history’s most notorious dictators.
Looking back to an interview Trump did with Playboy in 1990, which got political, Meyers reflected on how “Donald Trump has changed his opinions on almost everything since then.
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“He used to be pro-choice, now he’s anti-abortion. He used to be for gun control, now he’s against it,” Meyers said. “But the one thing he’s been consistent on his entire life is his support for dictators.”
In addition to echoing Hitler’s very own words while speaking to voters in New Hampshire, Trump also tried to validate a point he was making against Joe Biden by quoting Vladimir Putin.
“Trump has been very clear that in the second term he will aspire to be a dictator by using the language of dictators,” Meyers relayed. “His recent embrace of fascist rhetoric has drawn comparisons to dictators like Adolf Hitler, who used the same language. Which prompted Trump to defend himself this week in a way that only raised more questions.”
In short: Trump swore that he has never read Mein Kampf—despite the fact that ex-wife Ivana, who died in 2022, once shared that he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches as his bedside reading.
“If you’re echoing Hitler, it doesn’t really matter if you’re ripping him off or you got there on your own,” said Meyers. “You’re still echoing Hitler.”
