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You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Squishable Saturday Morning Open Thread

Squishable Saturday Morning Open Thread

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So, ambulatory cream cheese sculpture Hugh Hewitt interviewed Donald Trump yesterday. I did not listen, but according to Politico’s account of the confab, Trump said his recent Nazi rhetoric was NOT cribbed from Hitler’s playbook because who even is Hitler, and what book anyway?

“First of all, I know nothing about Hitler,” Trump said Friday. “I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works. They say that he said something about blood. He didn’t say it the way I said it, either, by the way, It’s a very different kind of a statement.”

I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t find the Republican Party’s once and future nominee’s assertion that he independently came up with a novel version of “blood and soil” ethno-nationalism that only coincidentally resembles Hitler’s terribly reassuring. It was probably good enough for Hewitt though.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

71Comments

  5. 5.

    Princess

    He doesn’t know what Hitler said or even who he is (coffee boy maybe?) but he knows what he said is different but he can’t explain how.

  6. 6.

    sab

    @Barbara: Probably by Steven Miller, who in turns is just being contrary to piss off his own family.

    I do believe that TFG can’t read a word of German.

  7. 7.

    hells littlest angel

    “First of all, I know nothing about Hitler,” Trump said Friday.

    He worked briefly for my campaign as a volunteer, but I never met him.

  9. 9.

    Butch

    Colbert’s comment was something along the lines of “of course Hitler said it differently.  He said it in German.”

  10. 10.

    Marmot

    @RevRick: I just about believe it. The attitudes he’s reinforcing and promoting are just about instinctive for a certain subset of conservatives. Say ~27% (of the total population)?

    And if TFG knows anything, it’s what’ll rile up a crowd.

  12. 12.

    FelonyGovt

    He’s not a “student” of anything. Doesn’t mean he’s not operating out of Hitler’s playbook.

  13. 13.

    brantl

    Hugh Hewitt, a giant among negligible men interviews STumpy, a minimal presence in the lives of all decent people.

  14. 14.

    Another Scott

    ICYMI, repost, Vanity Fair (from 2015):

    Donald Trump appears to take aspects of his German background seriously. John Walter works for the Trump Organization, and when he visits Donald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says, “Heil Hitler,” possibly as a family joke.

    Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.

    “Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?” I asked Trump.

    Trump hesitated. “Who told you that?”

    “I don’t remember,” I said.

    “Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (“I did give him a book about Hitler,” Marty Davis said. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”)

    Later, Trump returned to this subject. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”

    Same old same old, with more confusion and lies.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  15. 15.

    MomSense

    Ivana told Vanity Fair over 30 years ago that Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches on his bedside table.  Trump confirmed he was given the book by his friend Marty Davis but said he never read it.  So I don’t know why media are pretending that there is any doubt about this.
    WTAF America.

  16. 16.

    MomSense

    @Another Scott:

    The original article was published in 1990.  Ivana was also a terrible person.  She harassed my friend who worked for her as Assistant GM of her hotel.

  17. 17.

    Another Scott

    @MomSense: Yeah, just about all of them are terrible people.  How could they not be??

    Thanks.

    [eta:] The VF story is a 2015 “from the archive” repost of the 1990 article.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  18. 18.

    Scout211

    Going around the news sites yesterday was a Joe Rogan segment with a guest.  It was typical of Joe Rogan but also infuriating.  Everything is fine if Trump does it/says it.

    Joe Rogan Corrected On His Own Show For Dissing Biden…By Quoting Trump

    I watched the segment video.  The short version so you don’t have to watch: Rogan and a guest were making fun of Biden who was quoting Trump.

    Did you hear what he said yesterday, or a couple days ago?” Rogan asked his guest, MMA fighter Bo Nickal, in an exchange first flagged by Mediaite. “He’s talking about the Revolutionary War. He’s like, ‘One of the reasons why we lost the Revolutionary War … was that they didn’t have enough airports.’”

    “If you were you at any other job, and you were talking like that, they’d go, ‘Hey, you’re done,’” he added.

    But when a staff person corrected them, suddenly it wasn’t such a horrible thing to say.

    A clip of Biden’s speech played, and Rogan said, “Yeah, that’s it.”

    “Just for the record,” the person said, “it’s not fake, but he was referencing Trump saying that.”

    Awkward.

    Even more awkward? Seconds after making his false Biden assertion, Rogan had complained about the “media gaslighting people.”

    Interestingly, after learning it was Trump who made the mistake, Rogan didn’t seem to think it was such a big deal.

    “So, he fucked up,” he said with a laugh.

  19. 19.

    Albatrossity

    He doesn’t write his speeches, and he doesn’t read books. But Stephen Miller, the person who does write his speeches, is an actual Nazi who has probably memorized Mein Kampf.

  20. 20.

    JML

    @Another Scott: It is possible to be absurdly rich and not be a total asshole. I’ve even met some of them and seen it in person! But the Trump family, man…seems to be part and parcel. It’d be almost impressive how awful they are if they weren’t so dangerous.

  21. 21.

    satby

    Thank deities Christmas is almost over. They have the cheesy “All Christmas music” radio station on full blast, my motormouth neighbor hasn’t drawn breath in his constant yammering for an hour and a half, and niw the idiot next to me is humming to a fenetic Manhattan Transfer version of the Carol of the bells. It’s only 9 am, I should be suicidal by 10 am.

  22. 22.

    Scout211

    @Albatrossity: He doesn’t write his speeches, and he doesn’t read books.

    Yes, and his memory is failing him so there are many things that he likely doesn’t remember and most certainly gets wrong.  But as we all know, his fans don’t care, his minions and the GOP rework his gaffs, (“Oh he meant the fentanyl imported by all those illegal immigrants is poisoning the nation”) so anything goes.  And the media is right there with the latest quote, rarely with a factual correction.

    But Biden is old and he stumbled.  Grrrr.

  23. 23.

    Another Scott

    @Scout211: I encountered that tactic as a kid calling in to correct Neal Boortz on his Atlanta radio show in the early ’70s.  He attacked a woman caller who said that a cop was mean to her at a traffic stop for no reason and didn’t give her a citation.  He then twisted what she said and turned it into her attacking the defenseless cop who was doing his job and protecting us all, yada yada.  Of course, all his callers were piling on, telling him he was right, etc.  When I called to correct him and defend her, he mumbled something and changed the subject.

    It’s what they do.  It’s all about getting listeners engaged and riled up so they stay tuned in and come back. It’s not about the truth or reality.

    [eta] In that respect, Limbaugh was right.  It’s “entertainment”, like professional wrestling, but it’s toxic because it’s lies and too many people don’t understand that.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  25. 25.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby: Sounds awful! Is this the last market day for a while? Take good care of yourself. And what about your furnace? Were you able to get the blower repaired/reactivated?

  26. 26.

    sab

    @satby: I love traditional Christmas carols but I really hate the popular commercial stuff. Spare me any more sobgs about Santa and his fucking reindeer!

  28. 28.

    RevRick

    @Marmot: Trump has a feral instinct in how to appeal to the darkness within. He understands that there is a huge chunk of the populace that admires bullies and wants that bullying aimed at certain other chunks of the populace. Which is fascism 101.

  30. 30.

    Captain C

    @Scout211:

    “Oh he meant the fentanyl imported by all those illegal immigrants is poisoning the nation”

    Probably after TFG says something along the lines of, “Now Ivanka, she always got the best blow, the very best.  Like Studio 54 back in the day.  I ran that club, ran it, was the most popular guy there.  Even Mick Jagger and his ex-wife, Bunny, or Binaca or something, used to come and sit at my booth and say, ‘Sir,’ they always called me ‘sir,’ of course, ‘Sir, you always have the best blow, that’s why we wrote all our songs for you.’   Junior usually got burned and came home with meth, and Eric, well, he can’t tell the difference between blow and baking powder…”

  33. 33.

    Marmot

    @RevRick: Exactly right.

    Edit: And I’d add that they feed/justify bullying with an endless litany of their own victimhood. And they freak out when somebody else claims victimhood—maybe because they understand its power.

  34. 34.

    Mike in NC

    Hugh Hewitt interviewed Donald Trump yesterday.

    Hasn’t this been done 100 times? Isn’t this the very definition of insanity?

  38. 38.

    Jamey

    @Albatrossity: this will probably get me in trouble, but Steven Miller and other Jews in Trump’s orbit (e.g. Laura Loomer) seem content fighting to be the last  one of us to be stuffed into a boxcar.

  39. 39.

    Marmot

    Y’all have some favorite Xmas songs/versions I don’t know? I collect them to separate out the copious chaff.

    By way of example, the Phil Spector and Jackson 5 Xmas stuff is phenomenal. And there’s a metal-guitar Carol of the Bells I’m fond of.

    The Lou Rawls “Merry Little Christmas” isn’t as good as it should be. I’d love a better version.

    Happy holidays!

  42. 42.

    Another Scott

    @Marmot: I’m a Grinch when it comes to most Christmas music.  It mostly seems so fake these days (even the “classics”) – here’s the music, now buy too much stuff!!  :-/  I just tune it out.

    I do have a soft spot for “The Little Drummer Boy” though.  I’m so very happy that I almost never hear it anywhere, so I can just have it to myself.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  44. 44.

    satby

    @O. Felix Culpa: nope, but it’s in the 50°s for the next week, so I can call on Tuesday. I can make it until then, not paying holiday rates.

    Edit: I only keep the heat at 64° anyway. So it’s  still reasonably in my comfort zone with a little space heater help.

  48. 48.

    Another Scott

    @mrmoshpotato: :-)

    Mr. Grinch’s yellow eyes seem to imply jaundice.  Poor guy.  He probably would have been less crabby if the Whos had just let him see their doctor.

    It’s all connected!!1

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  49. 49.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby:

    Glad to hear that the weather will be tolerable until you can get a repair person at non-holiday rates. I feel stoic keeping the house at 68 during the day and 64 at night; kudos to you for coping at 64 during the day!

  53. 53.

    Gin & Tonic

    I never read his works.

    Frankly I find this completely believable. I do not think Trump has ever read a book.

  55. 55.

    Miss Bianca

    @Another Scott: OMG. *That’s* your favorite Christmas carol? I…um…well, ok. No accounting for tastes. ; )

    I do recall that there was one of those holiday animated shows (Bass/Rankin?) that aired back in the 70s based on that carol which actually wasn’t half bad. I mean, I  still remember it after all these years, so it definitely made an impression! Kind of surprised I never hear anything about that one – seems like every other kiddie Christmas show from back in the day still circulates.

  59. 59.

    Bex

    @Marmot: Sorry.  I posted it in several other places last year and didn’t have a problem, but it doesn’t seem to be available this year.  I’ll see if I can find another address.

  61. 61.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    I keep hoping that a disgruntled sound man at a drumph rally cuts his mic and cues up the end of a Hitler speech, complete with a series of “Sieg Heils”. Would the MAGAts join in?

  63. 63.

    Tony G

    The sad truth is that, although the name “Adolph Hitler” has had some negative connotations among most Americans since 1942, a significant percentage of Americans — 90 years ago and now — have always been just fine with the racism and the violent hatred that were and are the essence of Nazi ideology.  Hitler approved of, and to a degree was inspired by, the legacy of racism in the United States.  I hate to use the words “clever” and “Trump” in the same sentence — but Trump was clever to claim that he came up the “poisoned blood” rhetoric all by himself.  At least some of his dimwitted followers might have a vague notion that that “Adolph Hitler” guy was not a nice man, but if Trump himself claims authorship of Nazi rhetoric then they’ll support it 100%.

  65. 65.

    Torrey

    I’ve pretty much had it with Christmas carols or Christmas music of any kind. That said, I can recommend without reservation Straight No Chaser’s “Twelve Days of Christmas” and “Christmas Can Can,” which feeds right into my Ebenezer Grinchiness. But in a cheerfully snarky way I can totally get behind.​​

  70. 70.

    Pink Tie

    How has nobody mentioned Fairytale of New York?! Also, for being known as “Queen of Christmas,” Mariah Carey is so overrated. Now if she decided to cover Fairytale, I’d give that a listen.

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