RUTHFULLY YOURS

It was the October surprise that surprised no one. America’s political and media elites have this week alleged that Donald Trump is just like Adolf Hitler. This might be a little more shocking if they hadn’t been claiming exactly this for the best part of eight years.

The prompt for the latest round of hysterical Trump-Nazi comparisons came from John Kelly, a former Trump chief of staff turned Trump-hater. In an interview with the New York Times, Kelly claimed that his former boss spoke wistfully of Hitler and said he wished that he had Hitler’s generals. Kelly is certain that Trump meets the ‘definition of a fascist’, having found a general definition online.

Trump’s campaign adamantly refutes Kelly’s claims. But vice-president Kamala Harris, Trump’s increasingly desperate presidential rival, has predictably seized on Kelly’s comments. She took time out from her busy schedule of preparing truly terrible answers for her CNN Town Hall yesterday, to stand in front of a podium with the presidential seal on it and denounce Trump as ‘a fascist’ who wants ‘unchecked’ power. Citing Kelly’s claims, she said that Trump wants ‘a military who will be loyal to him, personally, one that will obey his orders, even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the constitution of the United States’.

It seems the empty ‘joyous’ vibe that initially characterised Harris’s campaign has now given way to dystopian fear-mongering about the return of fascism. Harris is now reviving the core message of Joe Biden’s campaign – that Trump poses an existential, fascist-like threat to American democracy. It’s desperate stuff.

In accusing Trump of being a Third Reich revivalist, Kelly himself merely joins the very long list of former Trump aides and associates who have gone to great lengths to attack and repudiate him. This is certainly a sign that all is not well with Trump’s management style. And from the man who popularised the phrase, ‘You’re fired!’ – who woulda thunk it?

Still, the ever-growing ranks of Trump’s aides-turned-foes are also a sign that turncoats are richly rewarded for their betrayal in positive attention from the largely anti-Trump corporate media. They fawn over anyone close to Trump willing to say he’s a very bad man, and better still, that he’s a closet Nazi. That these stories only appeal to that portion of the electorate already suffering from incurable Trump Derangement Syndrome doesn’t seem to bother the media, which continue to churn out the same old stuff.

Kelly’s central claims aren’t exactly compelling, either. Trump is far from a blameless saint, of course. In a sense, he is the architect of his own media misfortunes, given his undisciplined, bombastic speaking style and terrible taste in upper management. But are we really to believe that Trump – a man with Jewish grandchildren – wants to emulate Hitler? It seems fanciful, to say the least. Equally, Trump’s policy platform is hardly Nazi-adjacent. It boils down to a right-wing populism of the protectionist and anti-mass-migration variety. If this is fascism, and an existential threat to democracy, then we really are through the looking glass.

The Trump is Hitler delirium is unlikely to bother everyday Americans, though. They will see this for what it is – yet more embittered political propaganda from an increasingly panicked establishment.

Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here.