At a Veterans Day rally in Claremont, New Hampshire on November 11, 2023, Donald Trump declared: “We pledge to root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” The language immediately drew comparisons to fascist dictators from leading historians and scholars.
Yale professor Jason Stanley, author of “How Fascism Works,” said: “It doesn't echo Mein Kampf. This is textbook Mein Kampf.” Presidential historian Jon Meacham warned: “To call your opponent 'vermin,' to dehumanize them, is to walk through the door toward the most ghastly kinds of crimes.” NYU professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on authoritarian leaders, noted: “Calling people 'vermin' was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini.”
Rather than walking back the comments, the Trump campaign doubled down. Spokesman Steven Cheung dismissed critics, saying their “sad, miserable existence will be crushed” when Trump returns to the White House — language that itself echoed authoritarian rhetoric. The Biden campaign responded that Trump had “parroted the autocratic language of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.”