Red Voters are sounding more and more like the American Nazis

This is supposed to be the "Holy Week" for the Christians and yet these Red Voters are sounding more and more like the American Nazis. Red was one of the colors Hitler chose. When I saw one of Trump's rallies on television, his MAGA hat Trumpers were wearing Red and Black. Those were Hitler's colors. Trump's right hand adviser Stephen Miller is a Nazi and advised Trump to make Jews a nationality. That was an anti semitic move. When Spano stood up to speak before and during the impeachment vote he made sure that no other religion mattered other than his own. Yet, these weeks are suppose to be a peaceful holiday which is to be spreading good will to men and women, joy, and peace on Earth, yet these Trumper Nazis who vote red are spreading hate such as kill all Democrats, Jews, those of the LGBT community, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and others who do not believe in their Nazi religion or are not of the Aryan race. I wonder where they are building the concentration camps. Thank G-d I am Jewish and not one of these hypocrites,

Please note the children with his hand up in the air in the lower right corner..The Trump's Nazi Youth Movement..... Sieg Trump. They are using the term PIPE for KIKE now.

Rep. Ross Spano, R FL District 15, alleging violate federal law by failing to return contributions and knew they were illegal.

Come on he's an attorney , he knows better and should be dis-bar for allegedly violating Federal Law in Campaign Donations. But he is a Nazi MAGA HAT WEARER and those who support Trump  can not break the law.
 IMPEACH THEM BOTH

Tampa Bay Times

HILLSBOROUGH

William March: Two new complaints filed against Ross Spano

Published Aug. 6, 2019

Two new complaints have been filed against Rep. Ross Spano, R-Dover, alleging that his 2018 campaign is continuing to violate federal law by failing to return contributions it knew were illegal.

The complaints were filed by the same person who filed an earlier complaint to the Federal Elections Commission concerning the allegedly illegal contributions themselves, Jan Barrow, president of the Lakeland Democratic Women's Club.

Her new complaints went to the FEC and the Office of Congressional Ethics, a non-partisan body established by the House to review allegations of misconduct by members or staff. The OCE can investigate complaints and refer them to the House Committee on Ethics.

The complaints arose because from June-October 2018, Spano borrowed $180,000 from two friends, Carey Carreno and Karen Hunt, and then, on dates roughly corresponding to those loans, he in turn loaned $167,000 to his campaign, which he reported as coming from "personal funds."

Campaign finance law says a candidate can give or loan his campaign any amount of personal funds. But a loan from a friend or relative for the purpose of providing money to the campaign is considered a contribution from the lender and is subject to contribution limits, which were $2,700, said Adav Noti, a former FEC assistant general counsel now with the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center.

In a Nov. 30 letter to the FEC, sent after the Times reported on the loans, Spano's lawyers said he "believed he was acting in full compliance with the law … based on consultations he had at the time," but then learned that the contributions "may have been in violation" of federal campaign finance laws."

Spano says he has since repaid Hunt and Carreno with the proceeds of a bank loan to himself. His personal financial disclosure shows a December, 2018 loan of up to $250,000 from Center State Bank.

Noti said a bank loan can be a permissible source of campaign funds, depending on the loan terms. But Spano's campaign has not reported receiving the proceeds of the bank loan nor repaying Hunt and Carreno, and Spano has not filed legally required FEC forms detailing the loan terms.

The complaints cite the letter from Spano's lawyers to the FEC as evidence that he knew at least by November 2018 the loans were illegal contributions.

Under federal law, the complaints say, if a campaign learns it has received an illegal contribution, it has 30 days to "disgorge" the contribution by returning it to the donor.

The OCE complaint alleges that Spano knew all along he was violating the law, saying, "It appears that Rep. Spano … engaged in a fraudulent and reckless scheme to funnel contributions well in excess of federal limits to his own campaign."

Barrow said she is "just an individual citizen that is sick and tired of politicians getting away with things. I want an integrity-filled person representing the constituents, and I don't think Ross Spano is that person.

"I think he is making a calculated decision that this will get swept under the rug or nobody's paying attention. I think he had full intent of doing it."

She noted that Spano, a lawyer, initially ran for state attorney general before switching to the Congressional District 15 race.

"You can't say on one hand that you're a lawyer and run for attorney general and say your experience (in the state Legislature) prepares you to serve, and then say you didn't know the law," she said.

Spano campaign spokeswoman Sandi Poreda responded via email Monday that the new complaints "are obviously politically motivated," referring to Barrow's political activity.


"The FEC is looking into the situation with the loans and as soon as they provide us with guidance, we'll know what steps to take next."

Spano didn't respond to a Times request for comment, but told a WFLA-TV interviewer Sunday the accusation that he purposely broke the law is "absolutely false," citing the letter of admission his lawyers sent to the FEC.

"I made an honest mistake. … When I found out about the potential problem, I immediately self-reported … to the FEC," he said. "Now we're working with the FEC to make sure we're in compliance."

Barrow said she emailed the OCE complaint Saturday and the FEC complaint was due for Federal Express delivery Tuesday.

Local Republicans on shootings

Hillsborough County Republican Party Chairman Jim Waurishuk's Facebook post Monday in the aftermath of the weekend's mass shootings: "Democrats do pray … they pray for violence, devastation, & destruction of mass shootings! Why? For the sole purpose of Fundraising!!!"

On Facebook, the comment got about a dozen "likes" and at least one angry, obscene response.

Democratic Chairman Ione Townsend responded, "Democrats do pray — we pray for peace, we pray for unity, and we pray that Republicans will stop this hateful rhetoric."

Meanwhile, in a Brian Stelter tweet, CNN blasted 49 Republican Congress members, including Hillsborough Reps. Ross Spano and Vern Buchanan and Sen. Rick Scott, for refusing to go on air Monday to talk about the shootings.

Contact William March at wemarch@gmail.com.

Vincent Ross Spano And His Ties To The Nazi Party

I am running against a open racist Republican who sounds like Heinrich Luitpold Himmler, the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Only Vincent Ross Spano is the Himmler of his Reichland in Florida Congressional District 15.

Spano and his followers proclaim they are not Nazis, yet in the past have called me Dirty Christ Killing Jew Cunt, Hymie and Kike. Being told I am a Kike, a Hymie and a Jew Cunt is not a mishearing.  He had appeared before a synagogue in Lakeland Florida and before that took Jewish money to travel to Israel on a "Fact Finding" Vacation.

Spano stood in front of the US House of Representatives, which is suppose to Represent everyone no matter what they believe or not, and wants to pass laws which the Christian Church will enforce the questionable Laws of Ministers, Pastors and others in saying their G_d told them. These "religious" people don't hear voices, they lie to you. They tell you Jesus told them to hate other people as a way to control you through their religion and then they speak about how peaceful their religion is and what "Good" Christians they are. So according to them, it is okay to hate and kill others in the name of their religion and G-d.

Rick Wiles, who Spano sounds like, declared that Christians in America have been enslaved by the Jews: "You're goyim slaves and I'm trying to provoke a goyim uprising." Spewing that Jews, who are now classified as Irgun Americans and Zionists, should be removed from the United States. Hitler and Himmler both wanted to remove Jews from Germany. That removal was called the Final Solution called Genocide. The Murder of millions of people, mostly Jews, German Liberals (Democrats), and the Communists or force them into slave labor until they died under the same lies Spano and Wiles spew in everyday life. 

However, Spano stood in front of Jews in a Synagogue in Lakeland Florida Temple Emanuel and spewed lies that he was behind Jews because a Jew is running against him and reporting the truth.

The Republican Jews are brainwashed. They claim before during and after World War II the Democrat Party was anti-Semitic. Both Parties were anti-Semitic. Both Parties had members of the Nazi Party and KKK Members in them. In fact Trump's father, Fred Trump, a Republican, was a member of the KKK/Nazis, marched in Jamaica, New York, and protested Jewish Merchants. Fred Trump made his money with his mother in brothels through rentals. That was their real estate, the Trump prostitutes of Trump's empire.   

These Ministers, Pastors, and others are the "Puritans" of today's society and escaped Europe since the Kings and Queens were forcing their religion on their ancestors. Now, these "Good" Puritan Christians, who hate Jews and any one who is not part of their religion, want to purify America with the blood of Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, Latinos, Blacks, Browns, the LGBTQ,  the Native Americans, the  Asians, and anyone who is not Aryan. 

Listen to these video below then click the link to donate.

His misquotes Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King Quotes. Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.

Visit Loretta Miller Official Page Click here

Donate here to remove Vincent Ross Spano

Here are 20 serious points of comparison between the early Hitler and Trump.

I have said this before and now I can see I am right

Leading Civil Rights Lawyer Shows 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler’s Early Rhetoric and Policies

1.1. Neither was elected by a majority. Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes, receiving votes by 25.3 percent of all eligible American voters.

2. Both found direct communication channels to their base.

3. Both blame others and divide on racial lines

4. Both relentlessly demonize opponents.

5. They unceasingly attack objective truth. “Both Trump and Hitler maintained a relentless assault on the very idea of objective truth,”

6. They relentlessly attack mainstream media.

7. Their attacks on truth include science.

8. Their lies blur reality—and supporters spread them.

9. Both orchestrated mass rallies to show status.

10. They embrace extreme nationalism.

11. Both made closing borders a centerpiece.

12. They embraced mass detention and deportations.

13. Both used borders to protect selected industries.

14. They cemented their rule by enriching elites

15. Both rejected international norms.

16. They attack domestic democratic processes.

17. Both attack the judiciary and rule of law.

18. Both glorify the military and demand loyalty oaths.

19. They proclaim unchecked power.

20. Both relegate women to subordinate roles.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/09/leading-civil-rights-lawyer-shows-20-ways-trump-copying-hitlers-early-rhetoric-and?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3Pq9HdyvR0MqQco7K2rDQikiaukq1UKk7vMcjGIv9I9NqqOJlYntkbncU

Published on

Friday, August 09, 2019

by

Common Dreams

Leading Civil Rights Lawyer Shows 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler’s Early Rhetoric and Policies

The author, Burt Neuborne, is one of America’s top civil liberties lawyers, and questions whether federal government can contain Trump and GOP power grabs.

by

Steven Rosenfeld

We’re used to thinking of Hitler’s Third Reich as the incomparably evil tyranny that it undoubtedly was. But Hitler didn’t take

 power by force. He used a set of rhetorical tropes codified in Trump’s bedside reading that persuaded enough Germans 

to welcome Hitler as a populist leader. (Photo: photolibrarian/Flickr/cc)

.

A new book by one of the nation’s foremost civil liberties lawyers powerfully describes how America’s constitutional checks and balances are being pushed to the brink by a president who is consciously following Adolf Hitler’s extremist propaganda and policy template from the early 1930s—when the Nazis took power in Germany.

 In When at Times the Mob Is Swayed: A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Our Republic, Burt Neuborne mostly focuses on how America’s constitutional foundation in 2019—an unrepresentative Congress, the Electoral College and a right-wing Supreme Court majority—is not positioned to withstand Trump’s extreme polarization and GOP power grabs. However, its second chapter, “Why the Sudden Concern About Fixing the Brakes?,” extensively details Trump’s mimicry of Hitler’s pre-war rhetoric and strategies.

 Neuborne doesn’t make this comparison lightly. His 55-year career began by challenging the constitutionality of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. He became the ACLU’s national legal director in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. He was founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School in the 1990s. He has been part of more than 200 Supreme Court cases and Holocaust reparation litigation.

 “Why does an ignorant, narcissistic buffoon like Trump trigger such anxiety? Why do so many Americans feel it existentially (not just politically) important to resist our forty-fifth president?” he writes. “Partly it’s just aesthetics. Trump is such a coarse and appalling man that it’s hard to stomach his presence in Abraham Lincoln’s house. But that’s not enough to explain the intensity of my dread. LBJ was coarse. Gerald Ford and George W. Bush were dumb as rocks. Richard Nixon was an anti-Semite. Bill Clinton’s mistreatment of women dishonored his office. Ronald Reagan was a dangerous ideologue. I opposed each of them when they appeared to exceed their constitutional powers. But I never felt a sense of existential dread. I never sensed that the very existence of a tolerant democracy was in play.”

 A younger Trump, according to his first wife’s divorce filings, kept and studied a book translating and annotating Adolf Hitler’s pre-World War II speeches in a locked bedside cabinet, Neuborne noted. The English edition of My New Order, published in 1941, also had analyses of the speeches’ impact on his era’s press and politics. “Ugly and appalling as they are, those speeches are masterpieces of demagogic manipulation,” Neuborne says.

 “Watching Trump work his crowds, though, I see a dangerously manipulative narcissist unleashing the demagogic spells that he learned from studying Hitler’s speeches—spells that he cannot control and that are capable of eroding the fabric of American democracy,” Neuborne says. “You see, we’ve seen what these rhetorical techniques can do. Much of Trump’s rhetoric—as a candidate and in office—mirrors the strategies, even the language, used by Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s to erode German democracy.”

Many Americans may seize or condemn Neuborne’s analysis, which has more than 20 major points of comparison. The author repeatedly says his goal is not “equating” the men—as “it trivializes Hitler’s obscene crimes to compare them to Trump’s often pathetic foibles.” 

 Indeed, the book has a larger frame: whether federal checks and balances—Congress, the Supreme Court, the Electoral College—can contain the havoc that Trump thrives on and the Republican Party at large has embraced. But the Trump-Hitler compilation is a stunning warning, because, as many Holocaust survivors have said, few Germans or Europeans expected what unfolded in the years after Hitler amassed power. 

 Here’s how Neuborne introduces this section. Many recent presidents have been awful, “But then there was Donald Trump, the only president in recent American history to openly despise the twin ideals—individual dignity and fundamental equality—upon which the contemporary United States is built. When you confront the reality of a president like Trump, the state of both sets of brakes—internal [constitutional] and external [public resistance]—become hugely important because Donald Trump’s political train runs on the most potent and dangerous fuel of all: a steady diet of fear, greed, loathing, lies, and envy. It’s a toxic mixture that has destroyed democracies before, and can do so again.  

“Give Trump credit,” he continues. “He did his homework well and became the twenty-first-century master of divisive rhetoric. We’re used to thinking of Hitler’s Third Reich as the incomparably evil tyranny that it undoubtedly was. But Hitler didn’t take power by force. He used a set of rhetorical tropes codified in Trump’s bedside reading that persuaded enough Germans to welcome Hitler as a populist leader. The Nazis did not overthrow the Weimar Republic. It fell into their hands as the fruit of Hitler’s satanic ability to mesmerize enough Germans to trade their birthright for a pottage of scapegoating, short-term economic gain, xenophobia, and racism. It could happen here.” 

 20 Common Themes, Rhetorical Tactics and Dangerous Policies

 Here are 20 serious points of comparison between the early Hitler and Trump. 

 1. Neither was elected by a majority. Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes, receiving votes by 25.3 percent of all eligible American voters. “That’s just a little less than the percentage of the German electorate that turned to the Nazi Party in 1932–33,” Neuborne writes. “Unlike the low turnouts in the United States, turnout in Weimar Germany averaged just over 80 percent of eligible voters.” He continues, “Once installed as a minority chancellor in January 1933, Hitler set about demonizing his political opponents, and no one—not the vaunted, intellectually brilliant German judiciary; not the respected, well-trained German police; not the revered, aristocratic German military; not the widely admired, efficient German government bureaucracy; not the wealthy, immensely powerful leaders of German industry; and not the powerful center-right political leaders of the Reichstag—mounted a serious effort to stop him.” 

 2. Both found direct communication channels to their base. By 1936’s Olympics, Nazi narratives dominated German cultural and political life. “How on earth did Hitler pull it off? What satanic magic did Trump find in Hitler’s speeches?” Neuborne asks. He addresses Hitler’s extreme rhetoric soon enough, but notes that Hitler found a direct communication pathway—the Nazi Party gave out radios with only one channel, tuned to Hitler’s voice, bypassing Germany’s news media. Trump has an online equivalent. “Donald Trump’s tweets, often delivered between midnight and dawn, are the twenty-first century’s technological embodiment of Hitler’s free plastic radios,” Neuborne says. “Trump’s Twitter account, like Hitler’s radios, enables a charismatic leader to establish and maintain a personal, unfiltered line of communication with an adoring political base of about 30–40 percent of the population, many (but not all) of whom are only too willing, even anxious, to swallow Trump’s witches’ brew of falsehoods, half-truths, personal invective, threats, xenophobia, national security scares, religious bigotry, white racism, exploitation of economic insecurity, and a never ending-search for scapegoats.” 

 3. Both blame others and divide on racial lines. As Neuborne notes, “Hitler used his single-frequency radios to wax hysterical to his adoring base about his pathological racial and religious fantasies glorifying Aryans and demonizing Jews, blaming Jews (among other racial and religious scapegoats) for German society’s ills.” That is comparable to “Trump’s tweets and public statements, whether dealing with black-led demonstrations against police violence, white-led racist mob violence, threats posed by undocumented aliens, immigration policy generally, protests by black and white professional athletes, college admission policies, hate speech, even response to hurricane damage in Puerto Rico,” he says. Again and again, Trump uses “racially tinged messages calculated to divide whites from people of color.” 

 4. Both relentlessly demonize opponents. “Hitler’s radio harangues demonized his domestic political opponents, calling them parasites, criminals, cockroaches, and various categories of leftist scum,” Neuborne notes. “Trump’s tweets and speeches similarly demonize his political opponents. Trump talks about the country being ‘infested’ with dangerous aliens of color. He fantasizes about jailing Hillary Clinton, calls Mexicans rapists, refers to ‘shithole countries,’ degrades anyone who disagrees with him, and dreams of uprooting thousands of allegedly disloyal bureaucrats in the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, and the CIA, who he calls ‘the deep state’ and who, he claims, are sabotaging American greatness.”

 5. They unceasingly attack objective truth. “Both Trump and Hitler maintained a relentless assault on the very idea of objective truth,” he continues. “Each began the assault by seeking to delegitimize the mainstream press. Hitler quickly coined the epithet Lügenpresse (literally ‘lying press’) to denigrate the mainstream press. Trump uses a paraphrase of Hitler’s lying press epithet—‘fake news’—cribbed, no doubt, from one of Hitler’s speeches. For Trump, the mainstream press is a ‘lying press’ that publishes ‘fake news.’” Hitler attacked his opponents as spreading false information to undermine his positions, Neuborne says, just as Trump has attacked “elites” for disseminating false news, “especially his possible links to the Kremlin.” 

 6. They relentlessly attack mainstream media. Trump’s assaults on the media echo Hitler’s, Neuborne says, noting that he “repeatedly attacks the ‘failing New York Times,’ leads crowds in chanting ‘CNN sucks,’ [and] is personally hostile to most reporters.” He cites the White House’s refusal to fly the flag at half-mast after the murder of five journalists in Annapolis in June 2018, Trump’s efforts to punish CNN by blocking a merger of its corporate parent, and trying to revoke federal Postal Service contracts held by Amazon, which was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post. 

 7. Their attacks on truth include science. Neuborne notes, “Both Trump and Hitler intensified their assault on objective truth by deriding scientific experts, especially academics who question Hitler’s views on race or Trump’s views on climate change, immigration, or economics. For both Trump and Hitler, the goal is (and was) to eviscerate the very idea of objective truth, turning everything into grist for a populist jury subject to manipulation by a master puppeteer. In both Trump’s and Hitler’s worlds, public opinion ultimately defines what is true and what is false.”

 8. Their lies blur reality—and supporters spread them. “Trump’s pathological penchant for repeatedly lying about his behavior can only succeed in a world where his supporters feel free to embrace Trump’s ‘alternative facts’ and treat his hyperbolic exaggerations as the gospel truth,” Neuborne says. “Once Hitler had delegitimized the mainstream media by a series of systematic attacks on its integrity, he constructed a fawning alternative mass media designed to reinforce his direct radio messages and enhance his personal power. Trump is following the same path, simultaneously launching bitter attacks on the mainstream press while embracing the so-called alt-right media, co-opting both Sinclair Broadcasting and the Rupert Murdoch–owned Fox Broadcasting Company as, essentially, a Trump Broadcasting Network.”

 9. Both orchestrated mass rallies to show status. “Once Hitler had cemented his personal communications link with his base via free radios and a fawning media and had badly eroded the idea of objective truth, he reinforced his emotional bond with his base by holding a series of carefully orchestrated mass meetings dedicated to cementing his status as a charismatic leader, or Führer,” Neuborne writes. “The powerful personal bonds nurtured by Trump’s tweets and Fox’s fawning are also systematically reinforced by periodic, carefully orchestrated mass rallies (even going so far as to co-opt a Boy Scout Jamboree in 2017), reinforcing Trump’s insatiable narcissism and his status as a charismatic leader.” 

 10. They embrace extreme nationalism. “Hitler’s strident appeals to the base invoked an extreme version of German nationalism, extolling a brilliant German past and promising to restore Germany to its rightful place as a preeminent nation,” Neuborne says. “Trump echoes Hitler’s jingoistic appeal to ultranationalist fervor, extolling American exceptionalism right down to the slogan ‘Make America Great Again,’ a paraphrase of Hitler’s promise to restore German greatness.” 

 11. Both made closing borders a centerpiece. “Hitler all but closed Germany’s borders, freezing non-Aryan migration into the country and rendering it impossible for Germans to escape without official permission. Like Hitler, Trump has also made closed borders a centerpiece of his administration,” Neuborne continues. “Hitler barred Jews. Trump bars Muslims and seekers of sanctuary from Central America. When the lower courts blocked Trump’s Muslim travel ban, he unilaterally issued executive orders replacing it with a thinly disguised substitute that ultimately narrowly won Supreme Court approval under a theory of extreme deference to the president.” 

 12. They embraced mass detention and deportations. “Hitler promised to make Germany free from Jews and Slavs. Trump promises to slow, stop, and even reverse the flow of non-white immigrants, substituting Muslims, Africans, Mexicans, and Central Americans of color for Jews and Slavs as scapegoats for the nation’s ills. Trump’s efforts to cast dragnets to arrest undocumented aliens where they work, live, and worship, followed by mass deportation… echo Hitler’s promise to defend Germany’s racial identity,” he writes, also noting that Trump has “stooped to tearing children from their parents [as Nazis in World War II would do] to punish desperate efforts by migrants to find a better life.” 

 13. Both used borders to protect selected industries. “Like Hitler, Trump seeks to use national borders to protect his favored national interests, threatening to ignite protectionist trade wars with Europe, China, and Japan similar to the trade wars that, in earlier incarnations, helped to ignite World War I and World War II,” Neuborne writes. “Like Hitler, Trump aggressively uses our nation’s political and economic power to favor selected American corporate interests at the expense of foreign competitors and the environment, even at the price of international conflict, massive inefficiency, and irreversible pollution [climate change].” 

 14. They cemented their rule by enriching elites. “Hitler’s version of fascism shifted immense power—both political and financial—to the leaders of German industry. In fact, Hitler governed Germany largely through corporate executives,” he continues. “Trump has also presided over a massive empowerment—and enrichment—of corporate America. Under Trump, large corporations exercise immense political power while receiving huge economic windfalls and freedom from regulations designed to protect consumers and the labor force. “Hitler despised the German labor movement, eventually destroying it and imprisoning its leaders. Trump also detests strong unions, seeking to undermine any effort to interfere with the prerogatives of management.” 

 15. Both rejected international norms. “Hitler’s foreign policy rejected international cooperation in favor of military and economic coercion, culminating in the annexation of the Sudetenland, the phony Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the horrors of global war,” Neuborne notes. “Like Hitler, Trump is deeply hostile to multinational cooperation, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the nuclear agreement with Iran, threatening to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, abandoning our Kurdish allies in Syria, and even going so far as to question the value of NATO, our post-World War II military alliance with European democracies against Soviet expansionism.” 

 16. They attack domestic democratic processes. “Hitler attacked the legitimacy of democracy itself, purging the voting rolls, challenging the integrity of the electoral process, and questioning the ability of democratic government to solve Germany’s problems,” Neuborne notes. “Trump has also attacked the democratic process, declining to agree to be bound by the outcome of the 2016 elections when he thought he might lose, supporting the massive purge of the voting rolls allegedly designed to avoid (nonexistent) fraud, championing measures that make it harder to vote, tolerating—if not fomenting—massive Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, encouraging mob violence at rallies, darkly hinting at violence if Democrats hold power, and constantly casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections unless he wins.” 

 17. Both attack the judiciary and rule of law. “Hitler politicized and eventually destroyed the vaunted German justice system. Trump also seeks to turn the American justice system into his personal playground,” Neuborne writes. “Like Hitler, Trump threatens the judicially enforced rule of law, bitterly attacking American judges who rule against him, slyly praising Andrew Jackson for defying the Supreme Court, and abusing the pardon power by pardoning an Arizona sheriff found guilty of criminal contempt of court for disobeying federal court orders to cease violating the Constitution.” 

18. Both glorify the military and demand loyalty oaths. “Like Hitler, Trump glorifies the military, staffing his administration with layers of retired generals (who eventually were fired or resigned), relaxing control over the use of lethal force by the military and the police, and demanding a massive increase in military spending,” Neuborne writes. Just as Hitler “imposed an oath of personal loyalty on all German judges” and demanded courts defer to him, “Trump’s already gotten enough deference from five Republican [Supreme Court] justices to uphold a largely Muslim travel ban that is the epitome of racial and religious bigotry.” Trump has also demanded loyalty oaths. “He fired James Comey, a Republican appointed in 2013 as FBI director by President Obama, for refusing to swear an oath of personal loyalty to the president; excoriated and then sacked Jeff Sessions, his handpicked attorney general, for failing to suppress the criminal investigation into… Trump’s possible collusion with Russia in influencing the 2016 elections; repeatedly threatened to dismiss Robert Mueller, the special counsel carrying out the investigation; and called again and again for the jailing of Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, leading crowds in chants of ‘lock her up.’” A new chant, “send her back,” has since emerged at Trump rallies directed at non-white Democratic congresswomen. 

 19. They proclaim unchecked power. “Like Hitler, Trump has intensified a disturbing trend that predated his administration of governing unilaterally, largely through executive orders or proclamations,” Neuborne says, citing the Muslim travel ban, trade tariffs, unraveling of health and environmental safety nets, ban on transgender military service, and efforts to end President Obama’s protection for Dreamers. “Like Hitler, Trump claims the power to overrule Congress and govern all by himself. In 1933, Hitler used the pretext of the Reichstag fire to declare a national emergency and seize the power to govern unilaterally. The German judiciary did nothing to stop him. German democracy never recovered.” “When Congress refused to give Trump funds for his border wall even after he threw a tantrum and shut down the government, Trump, like Hitler, declared a phony national emergency and claimed the power to ignore Congress,” Neuborne continues. “Don’t count on the Supreme Court to stop him. Five justices gave the game away on the President’s unilateral travel ban. They just might do the same thing on the border wall.” It did in late July, ruling that Trump could divert congressionally appropriated funds from the Pentagon budget—undermining constitutional separation of powers. 

 20. Both relegate women to subordinate roles. “Finally,” writes Neuborne, “Hitler propounded a misogynistic, stereotypical view of women, valuing them exclusively as wives and mothers while excluding them from full participation in German political and economic life. Trump may be the most openly misogynist figure ever to hold high public office in the United States, crassly treating women as sexual objects, using nondisclosure agreements and violating campaign finance laws to shield his sexual misbehavior from public knowledge, attacking women who come forward to accuse men of abusive behavior, undermining reproductive freedom, and opposing efforts by women to achieve economic equality.” 

 Whither Constitutional Checks and Balances? 

 Most of Neuborne’s book is not centered on Trump’s fealty to Hitler’s methods and early policies. He notes, as many commentators have, that Trump is following the well-known contours of authoritarian populists and dictators: “there’s always a charismatic leader, a disaffected mass, an adroit use of communications media, economic insecurity, racial or religious fault lines, xenophobia, a turn to violence, and a search for scapegoats.”

 The bigger problem, and the subject of most of the book, is that the federal architecture intended to be a check and balance against tyrants, is not poised to act. Congressional representation is fundamentally anti-democratic. In the Senate, politicians representing 18 percent of the national population—epicenters of Trump’s base—can cast 51 percent of the chamber’s votes. A Republican majority from rural states, representing barely 40 percent of the population, controls the chamber. It repeatedly thwarts legislation reflecting multicultural America’s values—and creates a brick wall for impeachment. 

 The House of Representatives is not much better. Until 2018, this decade’s GOP-majority House, a product of 2011’s extreme Republican gerrymanders, was also unrepresentative of the nation’s demographics. That bias still exists in the Electoral College, as the size of a state’s congressional delegation equals its allocation of votes. That formula is fair as far as House members go, but allocating votes based on two senators per state hurts urban America. Consider that California’s population is 65 times larger than Wyoming’s.

 Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s majority remains in the hands of justices appointed by Republican presidents—and favors that party’s agenda. Most Americans are unaware that the court’s partisan majority has only changed twice since the Civil War—in 1937, when a Democratic-appointed majority took over, and in 1972, when a Republican-appointed majority took over. Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s blocking of President Obama’s final nominee thwarted a twice-a-century change. Today’s hijacked Supreme Court majority has only just begun deferring to Trump’s agenda.

 Neuborne wants to be optimistic that a wave of state-based resistance, call it progressive federalism, could blunt Trump’s power grabs and help the country return to a system embracing, rather than demonizing, individual dignity and fundamental equality. But he predicts that many Americans who supported Trump in 2016 (largely, he suggests, because their plights have been overlooked for many years by federal power centers and by America’s capitalist hubs) won’t desert Trump—not while he’s in power.

 “When tyrants like Hitler are ultimately overthrown, their mass support vanishes retroactively—everyone turns out to have been in the resistance—but the mass support was undeniably there,” he writes. “There will, of course, be American quislings who will enthusiastically support an American tyrant. There always are—everywhere.”

 Ultimately, Neuborne doesn’t expect there will be a “constitutional mechanic in the sky ready to swoop down and save American democracy from Donald Trump at the head of a populist mob.” Whatever Trump thinks he is or isn’t doing, his rhetorical and strategic role model—the early Hitler—is what makes Trump and today’s GOP so dangerous. “Even if all that Trump is doing is marching to that populist drum, he is unleashing forces that imperil the fragile fabric of a multicultural democracy,” Neuborne writes. “But I think there’s more. The parallels—especially the links between Lügenpresse and ‘fake news,’ and promises to restore German greatness and ‘Make America Great Again’—are just too close to be coincidental. I’m pretty sure that Trump’s bedside study of Hitler’s speeches—especially the use of personal invective, white racism, and xenophobia—has shaped the way Trump seeks to gain political power in our time. I don’t for a moment believe that Trump admires what Hitler eventually did with his power [genocide], but he damn well admires—and is successfully copying—the way that Hitler got it.”

 This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

 Steven Rosenfeld Steven Rosenfeld is a senior writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is a national political reporter focusing on democracy issues. He has reported for nationwide public radio networks, websites, and newspapers and produced talk radio and music podcasts. He has written five books, including profiles of campaigns, voter suppression, voting rights guides, and a WWII survival story currently being made into a film. His latest book is Democracy Betrayed: How Superdelegates, Redistricting, Party Insiders, and the Electoral College Rigged the 2016 Election (Hot Books, March 2018).