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Donald Trump’s campaign has removed a video shared by the former president on social media that included a reference to the establishment of a “unified Reich” if the Republican candidate were to win a second term in the White House.
The campaign was forced to delete the video from his Truth Social account on Tuesday, saying it had been accidentally reposted by a staffer who had not noticed the reference to Nazi Germany.
Trump’s sharing of the video reignited concerns about his extremist far-right rhetoric and authoritarian plans if he wins back the White House from President Joe Biden in the November election.
Trump has vowed to be a dictator on “day one” in his bid to reverse many of Biden’s policies and said he would seek retribution against his political opponents, while vowing to use detention camps and the US military to crack down on undocumented immigrants who were “poisoning the blood” of the country.
Democrats seized on the video as more evidence for what they consider Trump’s threat to US democracy and increasingly extremist rhetoric.
Kamala Harris, the vice-president, blasted Trump. “In this moment, extremists are trying to divide our nation, and we see them as they encourage xenophobia and hate,” she said. “This kind of rhetoric is unsurprising coming from the former president and it is appalling.”
The Biden campaign said the video was “part of a pattern of [Trump’s ] praise for dictators and echoing antisemitic tropes”.
It added: “He’s a threat to our democracy and Americans must reject him and stand up for our democracy this November.”
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Trump has a slight edge over Biden in national polling and in most critical battleground states ahead of the November election, but the president’s re-election campaign is hoping it can gain some ground by depicting Trump as a far-right extremist. This could make Trump especially unappealing to moderate and independent voters who dislike both candidates but are on the fence about who to vote for.
The Trump campaign said the video was “not a campaign video” and had been “created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word, while the president was in court”.
The video contained a series of imaginary newspaper articles about what would happen to America if he were to win the election — and under one headline was a phrase in smaller letters hailing the “creation of a unified Reich”.
