US Republican candidate Donald Trump has lashed out at Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for comparing an event he held in New York’s Madison Square Garden last week with a rally of Nazi supporters at the same venue in 1939 at which speakers praised Hitler’s Germany.
At the recent Trump event, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe compared Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage,” triggering a wave of rebuke from across the political spectrum. A senior advisor for the Republican campaign told the press that “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump” and his team.
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Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz jumped on the gaffe, telling a rally in Henderson, Nevada of a “direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden.”
Trump responded by telling a crowd of backers in Atlanta, Georgia: “The newest line from Kamala and her campaign is that everyone who isn’t voting for her is a Nazi. We’re Nazis.”
“I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi,” he stated.
Trump explained that his father taught him to never use either “Nazi” or “Hitler” as a slur. Both words, among many other insults, have been hurled his way, he said.
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“They call me everything from a mad genius looking to take over the world to a very very stupid person,” according to Trump.
While proclamations that Trump is a new Hitler who seeks to abolish democracy are nothing new, such language was only recently adopted by the Harris campaign. The vice president publicly called her rival a “fascist” last week, citing the opinion of retired General John Kelly, who served as the chief of staff in the Trump administration.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, meanwhile, said at the same rally that “I imagine that nearly every person in this room has a relative who served in the Second World War. Our families actually went and defeated the Nazis. To call us Nazis is a disgrace.”
Vance claimed that the US soldiers who took part in the Normandy landings in June 1944 would have been offended by the policies proposed by the Democratic campaign.
“If you think those brave men were fighting for an open border and sex change surgeries for illegal aliens, the proper term for you is ‘dips**t’,” he declared.
American voters will go to the polls to choose the next president on November 5.