President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign team said Monday that former President Donald Trump adopted language reminiscent of German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler when using the word “worm” to describe his political opponents. During a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, Trump declared that he would “eradicate communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs who live like vermin inside our country, who lie and steal and cheat in elections,” reiterating his false claim of that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
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These statements by Trump, made during the Veterans Day holiday in honor of the US military, were the target of criticism on the internet, with some historians pointing out that the language used reflects that of autocrats who sought to dehumanize their opponents.
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Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa issued a statement saying: “On a weekend in which most Americans honored the nation’s heroes, Donald Trump repeated the autocratic language of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini – two dictators which many US Army veterans gave their lives to fight for. Donald Trump believes he can prevail by dividing our country. He is wrong, and he will find out how wrong he is in November of next year.”
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, dismissed comparisons to Hitler and Mussolini, claiming that those making such claims are dramatizing and grasping at straws due to “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” White House spokesman Andrew Bates also noted that Trump’s use of the word “worm” echoed the expressions of Hitler and Mussolini. Bates said in a statement: “Using terms like this to refer to dissent would be unrecognizable to our founding fathers, but eerily recognizable to American war veterans who donned the uniform in the 1940s.”
