Donald Trump didn't know! And to be fair, Hitler probably did a LOT of things that regular folks like Donald Trump do. This is all a yooge misunderstanding. Trump was asked to address the issue on the part of the "Today" program that happens before Kathie Lee and Hoda get drunk, and here is what he said:
Well, I think it's ridiculous. We're having such a great time.
KNOW WHO ELSE HAD A GREAT TIME? (Killing Jews.)
Trump explains that it's just because there are so many people doing it at the same time, it's almost like something comes over them:
Yesterday I had 20,000 people in Mississippi. I had tremendous crowds in Michigan. And sometimes we'll do it for fun, and they'll start screaming at me, "Do the swear-in! Do the swear-in!" [...]Honestly until this phone call, I didn't know it was a problem. ... And I'll tell you what, almost everybody in the room raises their hand!
ALMOST EVERYONE.
OK, but now that it's been pointed out that he's being KIND OF LIKE HITLER, will he stop doing it?
If it's offensive or if there's anything wrong with it, I wouldn't do it. But when I say, "Raise your hand," everybody raises their hand. They're screaming at me to do it, we wanna do it!
He says he will "certainly look into" whether Hitler ever had his people raise their hands and say chants and pledges, perhaps before a hard day of KILLING JEWS, and if he finds out it really is offensive (because you know Holocaust survivors are always complaining about the tiniest offense when everyone else is having a great time), then he will try not to do that no more, because golly gosh, Donald J. Trump would never want to offend anyone!
Ayup. But he didn't know, honest! It's not like the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust were big stories or anything. Did Hitler even ever stay at the Mar-a-Lago? (No, because there are Jewishes there.)
[contextly_sidebar id="IQhpCuUofUGhZFQyQqM6Ao6ZjgWXQvFV"]And hey, maybe if this wasn't an isolated incident, it wouldn't be a story. MAYBE if he wasn't saying Mexico is sending rapists across the border, and that regular American citizens who happen to be Muslims should be eliminated from America, nobody would pay a whit of attention to a bunch of rednecks pulling their meat fingers out of their buttholes long enough to Sieg Heil! at Trump. MAYBE if he didn't encourage the absolute worst kinds of hatred in his rabid human pork rind followers, people wouldn't be worried about the unlikely rise of Trump.
But that's how things are, and even though Godwin's Law has officially been murdered to death by Trump's campaign, people are going to keep noticing that, ahem, yeah he's kinda acting a lot like Hitler, just saying, not that we're implying anything.
[Today viaTalking Points Memo]
