Hillary Clinton likened Trump supporters to Nazis because they pointed in the air during a rally.
While speaking at the Texas Tribune festival in Austin, Texas, on Friday, the former first lady, secretary of state, and failed 2016 presidential candidate recounted that when she was a student, she wondered why people in the 1930s and 40s were so enthralled with Adolf Hitler. Clinton implied that a similar phenomenon was going on with Trump supporters because, like at Hitler’s rallies, people at Trump rallies raised their arms while he was speaking.
“I remember as a young student, you know, trying to figure out, how people get basically drawn in by Hitler,” Clinton said. “How did that happen? I’d watch newsreels and I’d see this guy standing up there ranting and raving, and people shouting and raising their arms. I thought, ‘What’s happened to these people?’”
“You saw the rally in Ohio the other night,” Clinton continued. “Trump is there ranting and raving for more than an hour, and you have these rows of young men with their arms raised. I thought, ‘What is going on?’ So there is a real pressure, and I think it is fair to say we’re in a struggle between democracy and autocracy.”
Hillary Clinton likens Trump supporters to Nazis during remarks at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin
“What’s happened to these people?”https://t.co/fWLON5d2b3 pic.twitter.com/b8H6Cm4AKF
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) September 24, 2022
Clinton was referring to Trump’s “Save America” Rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on September 17. Trump closed his remarks with a prepared monologue set to dramatic music. As Trump was speaking, supporters in the audience raised their arms and pointed upward with their index fingers. Some commentators claimed the move was associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory, but others said the crowd was simply showing the number one in reference to Trump’s “America First” message.
(Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
Clinton was not the only left-wing figure to compare Trump supporters to Nazis after the rally. Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin claimed that Trump supporters pointing in the air “bore an uncanny resemblance to the infamous Nazi salute.” Other left-wingers, including feminist author Joyce Carol Oates, Harvard professor emeritus Laurence Tribe, retired Army General and MSNBC contributor Barry McCaffrey, and the left-wing legal organization Citizens for Ethics all compared the rally attendees to Nazi supporters on Twitter.
“As usual, the media is working hand in hand with the Democrats weeks before an election,” Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said in a statement to the New York Post. “It seems like perpetual-failed-candidate Hillary Clinton’s basket of deplorables has run stale, not unlike herself. It’s pathetic, it’s divisive, and it is further cementing her legacy of cringe.”
Clinton infamously labeled Trump supporters “deplorables” during the 2016 election. “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables,’” Clinton said at the time. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”
Clinton’s rhetoric is also similar to President Joe Biden’s recent line of attack against so-called “MAGA Republicans.”
At a closed-door event with supporters in Rockville, Maryland, in August, Biden said that the ideology of Trump and his supporters borders on fascism. “What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden said. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism.”