US President Joe Biden reacted angrily to a video shared on his rival Donald Trump's online platform with a statement about a “united empire” and accused his predecessor of using Nazi rhetoric. Trump “uses Hitler's language, not America's,” Biden said on Tuesday at a meeting with donors to his election campaign in Boston, Massachusetts.
At the same time, Biden published a video on the online service X in which he looks at his cell phone in obvious shock and comments on the video from the Trump camp: “Wow. A united empire? That's Hitler's language, not America's,” Biden says in the video.
The video with the statement about the “united Reich” was published on Monday on Trump's account on his own online platform Truth Social. The German word “Reich” is used.
The video was removed after 19 hours after it sparked widespread outrage. It describes the scenario of a Trump victory in the presidential election in November, in which the right-wing populist wants to run against Biden in a repeat of the 2020 election duel.
“What happens if Donald Trump wins? What's next for America?” the 30-second clip asks, as several headlines are displayed. In addition to newspaper headlines such as “Economy is booming” and “Border is closed,” it also talks about “creating a united empire.”
The German word “Reich” is often used in the US as a synonym for the Nazi Third Reich. The video, which apparently contains some elements copied from other texts, also mentions World War I. The newspaper title used about the “united Reich” could therefore refer to the German Empire, which existed from 1871 to 1918.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said it was not an official campaign video. It was created by another Truth Social user and then shared by a Trump staffer who did not see the word “rich.”
Biden called this a “lame” excuse. The president also cited reports that Trump said in internal meetings that Hitler had done “some good things.” These reports were “no surprise” to him, Biden said.
A few weeks ago, the US news channel CNN reported on the ex-president's supposedly positive comments about Hitler, citing Trump's former White House chief of staff, John Kelly. Trump said one of the “good things” Hitler had accomplished was rebuilding the German economy, Kelly was quoted as saying.
Biden campaign spokesman James Singer pointed out that Trump has used Nazi rhetoric in the past. “Donald Trump is not playing games,” Singer said. “He is telling America exactly what he intends to do when he returns to power: rule as a dictator over a 'united empire.'”
Trump has repeatedly caused outrage with rhetoric reminiscent of Nazi language. He has called political opponents “vermin” and said that immigrants “poison the blood of our country.”
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