Donald Trump has placed himself at the center of his unlikely rise from a reality television star to a one-time, potential future president, emphasizing that he is wiser than the political elite in Washington. He has even gone so far as to refer to himself as a “very stable genius”. However, Trump is now facing criticism for his use of rhetoric that was once used by Adolf Hitler to assert that immigrants entering the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country”. Despite this, when questioned about this rhetoric, Trump claims to be completely unaware of Hitler’s similar statements.
This ignorance has become a pattern for Trump. When faced with uncomfortable storylines, he repeatedly pleads ignorance, particularly when dealing with those who promote racist or antisemitic rhetoric. This was seen in his response to being endorsed by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke during his 2016 campaign and when asked about the QAnon conspiracy and the Proud Boys militia group in 2020.
Trump’s ignorance about some of the most significant aspects of American history, such as the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, has also been brought into question. Despite running for the presidency and claiming to have no knowledge of Hitler’s biography or “Mein Kampf”, reports suggest that his ex-wife claimed that he had read “My New Order”, a book of Hitler’s speeches.
It is particularly notable that Trump has been involved in Holocaust memorial events and has spoken out against Holocaust deniers. Despite his claims of ignorance, Trump has continued to use rhetoric similar to that of Hitler, stating multiple times that immigrants are “poisoning our country” and “poisoning the blood of our country”. Although he insists that his words are “very different” from Hitler’s, he continues to use the same inflammatory language.