Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday deleted a social media video that mentioned the phrase “united empire” after it was criticized for imitating the phrase from Nazi Germany.
The phrase “United Empire” appears as part of a fictitious news article in the video that tells of Trump’s hypothetical victory in the 2024 election, with the narrator saying, “What will happen after Donald Trump wins? ” he asks.
Under the big heading “What’s next for America?” There was a small heading that read, “Creation of a unified empire greatly increases industrial power.”
The video also predicts that if Trump wins the 2024 election, there will be economic growth, tax cuts, border security and the deportation of illegal immigrants.
A spokesperson for the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign denounced the video on Monday night, calling it “a parrot of ‘Mein Kampf.'”
“Donald Trump is not playing games,” Biden campaign press secretary James Singer said in a statement. “We are accurately communicating this to the United States.”
“Parrotting Mein Kampf while warning of disaster if we lose is the unvarnished response of a man who knows that democracy continues to reject extreme visions of chaos, division and violence. Action,” Singer continued.
In a statement to ABC News, the Trump campaign insisted that this was not a campaign video, but rather an online video that was randomly reposted by an employee who did not know the words.
“This is not an election video, it was created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who apparently did not see the words while the president was in court,” a campaign spokesperson said. Carolyn Leavitt said in a statement.
The video was posted at 1:58 p.m. ET, during a lunchtime hearing in Trump’s hush money case. The video remained on President Trump’s social media pages for more than 18 hours before being deleted on Tuesday morning.
A screen capture of a video posted to former President Donald Trump’s page on TruthSocial on May 20, 2024.
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The video appears to have been created using an existing video template that mimics an old newspaper, with several parts of the template referencing historical dates and events.
The template includes a mock news article that reads, “Industrial power increased significantly in 1871 with the creation of a unified empire,” but the reference to 1871 is blurred in the video shared by President Trump. I couldn’t see it because it had been cut.
Trump has repeatedly faced similar criticism over the past year for echoing the words of Nazi German and fascist figures, including comparing political opponents to “vermin” at a rally last November. This includes what he said he would “eradicate.”
President Trump has also repeatedly said that illegal immigrants “contaminate our nation’s blood,” a phrase he used to describe white supremacists and the “blood poisoning” he infamously wrote about in his book “Mein Kampf.” It has attracted criticism from critics who say it was used by Hitler.
Trump later claimed he had never read “Mein Kampf” and said he used the term in a “completely different way” when disparaging illegal immigrants.
Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chan also rejected comparisons to Hitler and Mussolini last year, calling them “ridiculous claims.”
“Those who try to make that ridiculous claim are clearly snowflakes who are onto something. They are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and if President Trump returns to the White House, their sad and miserable Existence will be shattered,” Chan said.
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