MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said Donald Trump is “going full-on Hitler” after the former president referred to political opponents as “vermin” over the weekend.
The “Morning Joe” host took it as a warning ahead of the 2024 election.
“You look at the language of Donald Trump, you look at what Donald Trump says he’s going to do, and you go back to Maya Angelou saying that ‘when somebody tells you who they are, believe ‘em the first time,’” Scarborough said on his morning show Monday, quoting the late civil rights activist.
“We have to believe him, and we also have to believe that this is the most important election probably since 1864,” he added. That election, during the Civil War, saw Abraham Lincoln elected to a second term.
In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump vowed to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream.”
“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within,” the leading contender for the Republican 2024 nomination added.
He made similar remarks during a Veterans Day rally in Claremont, New Hampshire.
As commentators in the media have noted, Trump’s rhetoric is reminiscent of Nazi propaganda, which referred to Jewish people as “vermin.”
Last month, Trump drew rebuke after he said undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” another phrase that echoes language used by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.