The "Vermin" Switcheroo: Media Hypocrites Echo Democratic Party Super PAC's "Trump is Hitler" Attacks

They say the word "vermin" is Hitlerian but they used it to attack opponents too

Dec 12, 2023

“Trump Echoes Hitler,” was the headline the Democratic Party Super PAC MeidasTouch blasted out after Trump referred to opponents as “vermin”. In the following days and weeks, virtually all mainstream media outlets repeated the PAC’s talking points that “vermin” was a Nazi word, even though the media and the PAC’s top donor each used the same “Nazi propaganda” word to attack political opponents.

TRUMP: We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country…

On November 11, the Democratic Party SuperPAC shared a blog post. “BREAKING: Donald Trump echoes Hitler nearly verbatim.” The blog declared, “It is not hyperbolic to say that Donald Trump is using the Hitler playbook”.

Turns out, MeidasTouch’s number one donor and frequent video collaborator, also “echoes Hilter”. Open Secrets lists Bette Midler, who’s contributed at least $240,000 to the PAC, as MeidasTouch’s top donor. During the 2020 election, while a major MeidasTouch donor, Midler used the same dehumanizing “Nazi” word “vermin” to attack her political opponents. Midler commented on a Washington Post video of Fox News hosts, calling the Republican-aligned personalities, “the greediest, ugliest, most bloodsucking vermin”.

Midler previously smeared Melania Trump—a legal immigrant and naturalized citizen— as an “illegal alien”. Although she later apologized for mocking the first lady’s foreign accent. The major super PAC donor has also shared violent fantasies about murdering Donald Trump. “Someone needs to drive a stake through his heart, so we can #breathe again,” the millionaire actress posted on Twitter. In Trump’s so-called “Hitler” speech, there was no such overtly expressed desire for, or call to violence.

On November 12, the day after the SuperPAC set the narrative, the Washington Post and others echoed MeidasTouch’s “Trump Echoes Hilter” blog post, nearly verbatim.

Interesting, because there are at least a dozen instances of WaPo referring to and depicting Trump and Republicans as “rats” or “vermin”.

On November 13, a White House spokesman quoted the Washington Post comparing Trump to Hitler for his “vermin” line. The Guardian article reporting the White House’s comments hyperlinked to MeidasTouch in its first sentence. Countless more stories appeared in virtually every news outlet, including NPR, Forbes, New York Times, NY Mag, The Guardian, USA Today, Axios, ABC News, NBC, MSNBC, and Reuters, forwarded the narrative that if a speaker uses the word “vermin,” then they’re a Nazi.

“Calling political foes ‘vermin’,” is “Full Hitler,” wrote NY Mag.

“Vermin” is the “1 word…that should ‘terrify’ everyone,” wrote Huffington Post.

“Vermin” is “straight-up Nazi Talk,” wrote the New Republic (TNR). In stunning real-time hypocrisy, TNR implies Trump supporters are rats, with the red text subheading, "Rat Bait".

On November 14, at a 2024 campaign fundraiser in California, President Biden himself echoed the talking point that “vermin” has a “specific meaning” that “echoes language you heard in Germany in the ‘30s.” Although you could just go back to 1999 to see Biden using the term himself in a Senate hearing on antisemitism in Russia. Like Trump, he was referring to communists and fascists as “vermin”.

TRUMP: We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country…
BIDEN: I think the best disinfectant to deal with these vermin is to expose them...The Reds and the Browns in the Duma…

But of course, you are only allowed to use “Nazi language” and “Nazi propaganda” so long as those you dehumanize are Russians, alleged bigots, or Republicans.

“Enemies Within”

Trump posted the same lines from his speech on Truth Social. “The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within,” he said.

In addition to Trump using the word “vermin”, MeidasTouch (and its media echo) also argued his speech echoed Hitler because he discussed threats “within” the country.

MEIDAS TOUCH: Like Trump, Adolf Hitler infamously targeted the "enemies within" Germany, chiefly singling out communists and Jews. History.com recounts, "[Hitler] was appalled by Germany’s defeat [in WW1], which he blamed on “enemies within”–chiefly German communists and Jews–and was enraged by the punitive peace settlement forced on Germany by the victorious Allies.

WaPo echoed the Super PAC again regarding Trump's “threats from within” comment. “This was also a theme promoted by Hitler,” the Post wrote.

Although, Trump referred to “threats” from “within' he didn’t actually say “enemies within,” which according to MeidasTouch is an exclusively Hitlerian phrase. But do you know who has used that terminology? MeidasTouch’s patron saint, Joe Biden.

BIDEN 7/11/19: We are facing entered enemies both without and from within, hoping to exploit the fissures and our society, undermine democracy, break up our alliances, return us to an international system that might determines right.

The Democrat PAC’s and media’s attempts to paint Trump’s divisive rhetoric as a unique evil threat seem a bit ridiculous, when his opponent, the current President Joe Biden is just as divisive, repeatedly telling his followers that MAGA Republicans—approximately half of all American voters—active participants in democracy— are on a wicked quest “to destroy democracy”.

The Meidas Flop

The MeidasTouch PAC has been harshly criticized even by the fellow Biden-endorsing Rolling Stone, which published a 2020 investigation titled: “The Trouble With Meidas Touch”. Among its many troubles, Rolling Stone alleges the PAC doesn’t follow through on its stated goal. The PAC doesn’t actually help win elections.

“The group spent more than $1 million on an advertising strategy that it calls revolutionary but campaign veterans and independent experts say is nonsensical and a more effective tool for fundraising than for helping Democrats win elections.”

At least in this case, the Rolling Stone “campaign veterans and independents experts” appear to have been proven correct. FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages show all the recent hits comparing Trump to Hitler for his language completely backfired. On November 27, MSNBC had to admit, “Two weeks after Donald Trump labeled Americans he doesn't like as "vermin," polling suggests the controversy didn't hurt the Republican's candidacy at all.”

Trump wasn’t just “unscathed”, he went up in the polls, rising from 56.6% support on November 11 to 60% support on November 25.

The Rolling Stone investigation concluded that the counterproductive anti-Trump PAC was itself rather Trumpian, due to its “misinformation”; opaque finances ("some of the same legal issues that got the Trump campaign into trouble in 2020”); as well as its eagerness to threaten to sue and launch smear campaigns.

“When Rolling Stone scrutinized MeidasTouch about its business, its founders threatened to sue over a story that had not yet been published. A ceaseless barrage of misinformation followed, with MeidasTouch rallying its legions of social media followers to join the campaign.”
Meidas attacked and insulted the reporter, calling him a “coward” for declining to go on its podcast prepublication, as well as accusing him of being “slime,” a “tabloid hack,” and one of Trump’s “puppets.”

Rolling Stone added an editor’s note, informing readers that the author MeidasTouch accused of being a Trump puppet wrote a book titled “Trump/Russia: A Definitive History”. The Rolling Stone author Seth Hettena then went on to point out the PAC’s psychological projection—that the PAC itself was “Trumpian”.