Opinion | Why is this election even close?

The morning before Donald Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden on October 27, Brendan Buck, a former communications adviser to House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, appeared on MSNBC. Buck said it was “silly” and “completely disgusting” to compare Trump's event to the infamous pro-Nazi rally at the Garden in 1939.

“It’s an arena,” a visibly angry Buck insisted. “I don’t think walking into Madison Square Garden makes anyone who goes there a Nazi.”

Buck cast himself as a Trump critic, saying that Trump's comparison to Hitler – and his views on Nazism – alienated undecided voters who might vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

“That's the kind of rhetoric that just tells people, 'It doesn't matter.' They'll say whatever they want,'” Buck continued. “I can't tell you how much this upsets people who are undecided about Donald Trump and say, 'They're just targeting him.' They will say anything.'”

Now that Buck has seen the rally, I wonder if the Trump/Hitler comparison still offends him.

Trump's rally vs. Hitler's Reich

If Trump wins back the presidency, he has told everyone what he will do with it. Take him at his word.

Is at the heart of Trump's selling point

TRUMP: He rode into the White House on the wings of his “birth lie” about President Barack Obama. His lies at the Madison Square Garden rally spread so quickly that fact-checkers couldn't keep up. And his media echo chambers repeat these lies over and over until they stick.

As Jonathan Swift noted, “The lie flies, and the truth lags behind.”

HITLER: “A given signal unleashes a veritable torrent of lies and slander against any opponent who appears most dangerous, until the nerves of the persons attacked collapse… This is a tactic based on the precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and that is it also.” “The result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty…” (Shirer quote Hitler, pp. 22-23)

Immigrants are Trump's central lie

TRUMP: Trump and his Vice President JD Vance portray immigrants as subhuman. In their fantasy world, immigrants are responsible for everything that ails American voters: inflation, high prices, exorbitant rents, housing shortages, crime, everything. They lie to feed this narrative.

Vance admitted that he had substantiated his claim that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, stole and ate pets. But Trump still repeated and amplified the lie, turning the community upside down.

Trump claims he will “liberate” Aurora, Colorado, from non-existent immigrant gangs that he claimed run the city.

He calls America a “dumpster” of the worst people in the world – another lie.

He describes immigrants as “vermin” who “poison the blood of the country.” He falsely claims that millions of them are criminals from “prisons,” “mental hospitals,” and “lunatic asylums.”

HITLER: Wrote in My fight that he was “repelled by the collection of races… repelled by this whole mixture of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs and Croats and everywhere the eternal mushroom of humanity – Jews and more Jews… (His) hatred of the…” foreign mixture of peoples…” (W. Shirer, The rise and fall of the Third Reich, P. 27) And similar to Vance in his views on the need to increase birth rates, he repeatedly spoke of the need to “increase and preserve the species and the race.” (Shirer, p. 86)

“The Enemy Within” encompasses Trump’s retaliatory agenda

TRUMP: “We are running against something that is much bigger than Joe or Kamala and much more powerful than them, which is a huge, evil, corrupt, radical left-wing machine that runs today's Democratic Party,” Trump told the crowd at Madison Square Garden. Highlighting Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Adam Schiff (D-California). “They have done very bad things to this country. They are indeed the enemy from within.”

In fact, her only crime was publicly contradicting and criticizing Trump.

Trump promised he would be “dictator for a day” and said he would use the military against his enemies and direct the Justice Department to target his opponents. He has publicly vowed to “eradicate” his political opponents and imprison them.

And he promises to fill the federal government with loyalists who will never contradict him.

HITLER: “I will know neither peace nor peace until the November criminals (who, he falsely claimed, had “stabbed Germany in the back” with the onerous Treaty of Versailles of 1918) are overthrown.” (Schirer quotes Hitler, p. 70 ) He banished or executed those who got in his way and surrounded himself with sycophants.

TRUMP: During his first term, Trump upended the courts, including a federal judge in Florida who dismissed a criminal case against him. Like many of his appointees, she is clearly unsuited to her position. But now she is reportedly on a list of candidates to be Trump's next attorney general.

HITLER: Co-opted the judiciary and then set up his own special courts. By destroying the German constitution, he alone became the law. (Shirer, 268-274)

False populism

TRUMP: By promising to pursue pro-business policies in return for financial support for his campaign, Trump pre-sold the presidency. Examples abound: In return, he promised to reverse climate initiatives affecting major oil companies $1 billion in donations to his campaign; him now supports cryptocurrency (which he until recently referred to as a “fraud”); he took a new position that favored the legalization of marijuana; and he promised to task Elon Musk, who is pouring tens of millions of dollars into Trump's campaign, with cutting government regulations – creating stunning conflicts of interest between Musk's sprawling commercial interests and his government contracts.