NEW YORK (AP) — A video posted on that of Donald Trump His social media account included references to a “unified Reich” among hypothetical news headlines if he won the election in November.
The title appears among messages flashing on the screen such as “Trump wins!! and “The economy is booming!” » Other titles seem to refer to the First World War. The word “Reich” is often widely associated with Nazi Germany’s Third Reich, although references in the video shared by Trump appear to be a reference to the formation of the modern Pan-German nation. unifying the small states into a single Reich, or empire, in 1871.
The 30-second video appeared Monday on Trump’s account at a time when the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, while seeking to portray President Joe Biden as soft on anti-Semitism, has himself been repeatedly criticized for using language and rhetoric associated with Nazi Germany.
It was posted and shared on the former president’s Truth Social account while he was on a lunch break from home. Silent trial in Manhattan Monday afternoon. By Tuesday morning, the video had been deleted.
“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,” Karoline said Leavitt, campaign press secretary, in a statement.
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Biden, speaking at two fundraisers in Boston on Tuesday, highlighted Trump’s release of the video, describing it as part of a series of inflammatory comments sowing discord in the country, saying: “It is Hitler’s language – not America’s.” Shortly afterward, Biden’s campaign posted a short video online showing him watching the video on a cellphone, saying “Wow” and making a comment similar to one he made at fundraisers, adding: “He cares about retaining power. I care about you.”
Biden told a group of donors that it wasn’t the first time Trump “went down this road” and chastised the former president for offering a “lame excuse that a staffer got him do “.
“He attacks his opponents like vermin,” Biden said. “He says immigrants are poisoning the blood of America. It’s a phrase used by Hitler’s Germany, not by an American president.”
Earlier this month, Trump said at fundraiser that Biden is leading a “Gestapo administration,” referring to the Nazi secret police.
Trump has already used rhetoric echoing Adolf Hitler when he declared that immigrants entering the United States illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country” and called his opponents “vermin.”
The former president also sparked strong reactions having dinner with a white nationalist Holocaust denier in 2022 and for downplaying the 2017 rally in CharlottesvilleVirginia, where white nationalists chanted “The Jews will not replace us!” »
At least one of the titles that appear in the video appears to be text copied verbatim from a Wikipedia entry on World War I: “German industrial strength and production increased significantly after 1871, driven by the creation of a unified Reich. »
In one image, the headlines “Border is closed” and “15 million illegal aliens deported” appear above smaller text with the start and end dates of World War I.
The video appears to have been created by a meme creator who goes by the name Ramble_Rants.
The creator, who is part of a group of meme creators who The New York Times reported has already collaborated with the Trump campaign, posted the video on the social platform X on Monday morning.
In an article on X, Ramble_Rants defended the video, arguing that it was about “American peace and prosperity.”
The user explained in a post that the newspaper clippings in the video were pre-selected as part of a template showing historical headlines from video company Envato Elements.
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Associated Press writers Ali Swenson and Seung Min Kim in Boston contributed to this report.
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