Donald Trump has shared a video on his Truth Social account referencing a âunified reichâ if Trump wins the presidential election in November.
The video posted on Monday remained up for 15 hours into Tuesday morning despite the reference being pointed out by media outlets. The former presidentâs account removed it by about 10am ET on Tuesday.
Trumpâs campaign claimed a staffer did not see the word âreichâ before the video was posted and said it was not used intentionally but did not comment on why the video remained on Trumpâs account for so long.
In the video, a narrator states: âWhat happens after Donald Trump wins? Whatâs next for America?â Meanwhile, hypothetical headlines are shown, including: âIndustrial strength significantly increased ⦠driven by the creation of a unified reich.â
âReichâ is the German word for âempireâ, and is heavily associated with Adolf Hitler, who referred to his Nazi regime as the âThird Reichâ.
âThis was not a campaign video, it was created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word, while the president was in court,â Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaignâs press secretary, said in a statement.
The Associated Press reported the headline text appears to be copied verbatim from Wikipedia. âGerman industrial strength and production had significantly increased after 1871, driven by the creation of a unified Reich,â states the Wikipedia entry on the second world war.
Trump had dinner with the prominent antisemites Nick Fuentes and Kanye West in 2022, and in his campaign speeches he regularly states that immigrants are âpoisoning the blood of our countryâ, which critics have said echoes Nazi rhetoric.
The Biden campaign criticized Trump for sharing the video.
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âDonald Trump is not playing games; he is telling America exactly what he intends to do if he regains power: rule as a dictator over a âunified reichâ,â a Biden spokesperson, James Singer, said in a statement.
âParroting Mein Kampf while you warn of a bloodbath if you lose is the type of unhinged behavior you get from a guy who knows that democracy continues to reject his extreme vision of chaos, division and violence.â
The Biden campaign also cited other previous comments and actions from Trump that express or mirror antisemitic views, including claiming Hitler âdid some good thingsâ and praising neo-Nazi marchers during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
