A video posted to Donald Trump’s account on his social media network Monday included references to a “unified reich” among hypothetical news headlines depicting an election win by him in November.
The headline appears among messages flashing across the screen such as “Trump wins!!” and “Economy booms!” Other headlines appear to be references to World War I.
The word “reich” is often largely associated with Nazi Germany’s Third Reich, though the references in the video Trump shared appear to be a reference to the formation of the modern pan-German nation, unifying smaller states into a single reich, or empire, in 1871.
The 30-second video appeared on Trump’s account at a time when the presumptive Republican nominee for president, while seeking to portray President Biden as soft on antisemitism, has himself repeatedly faced criticism for using language and rhetoric associated with Nazi Germany.
It was posted and shared on the former president’s Truth Social account while he was on a lunch break from his Manhattan hush money trial.
His campaign said the word wasn’t used on purpose.
“This 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 (reich), while the president was in court,” Karoline Leavitt, the campaign press secretary, said in a statement.
But, reports Agence France-Presse, the Biden campaign said in a forceful statement in response to the video that Trump has a “long history” of anti-Semitic behavior.
“Donald 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 ‘unified reich,'” Biden-Harris spokesperson James Singer said in the statement.
Earlier this month, Trump said at a fundraiser that Mr. Biden is running a “Gestapo administration,” referring to the secret Nazi police force.
Trump previously used rhetoric echoing Adolf Hitler when he said immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and called his opponents “vermin.”
The former president has also drawn wide backlash for having dined with Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes in 2022 and for downplaying the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists chanted “Jews will not replace us!”
At least one of the headlines flashing in the video appears to be text that is copied verbatim from a Wikipedia entry on World War I: “German industrial strength and production had significantly increased after 1871, driven by the creation of a unified reich.”
In one image, the headlines “Border Is Closed” and “15 Million Illegal Aliens Deported” appear above smaller text with the start and end dates of World War I.
