Trump’s Reich stuff

Former president Donald Trump’s social media account shared a video Monday that sparked a Blitzkrieg among his harshest critics. The video featured hypothetical news headlines about Trump winning the November election, overlaid on newspapers with smaller, less visible headlines. One of those other headlines touted a “unified reich,” which was too perfect for some Trump haters to resist. Trump shared a Nazi-esque headline on his own social media account? Pounce and seize, friends!

“This man is a stain, a Nazi, a pure a simple garbage of a human being. And ANYONE who supports him now will be ASHAMED to ever admit they did someday,” former congressman Adam Kinzinger wrote.

The president responded to the incident as well. “Yesterday, his campaign posted online about if he wins it’ll be a unified reich — like the Third Reich,” Biden said. “This is the same guy that uses Hitler’s language, not America’s.” His campaign agreed that it was “echoing Nazi Germany.” 

The Trump campaign noted that they did not make the video — “it was created by a random account online,” said spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt — and that whoever shared it to Trump’s account did not see the word “reich” in the background. But an even better defense quickly emerged for the former president. For one, most of the news headlines in the video were pre-generated; the creator used a generic video template titled “Newspaper Vintage History Headlines Promo.” Second, the headline about a “unified reich” was ripped directly from the Wikipedia page for World War One… not World War Two.

“The wording appears to be lifted from the Wikipedia entry for World War One. Under the Background section of the Wiki entry, the subsection ‘Arms Race’ starts: ‘German industrial strength and production had significantly increased after 1871, driven by the creation of a unified Reich, French indemnity payments, and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine,’” Newsweek reported. For history buffs, they’re referring to the Kaiser’s Second Reich.

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel apparently did Nazi that context, instead choosing to skewer Trump, who he jokingly referred to as “Reich Tyson,” during his show Tuesday night.