Last week, the far-left publication known as The New Republic put out a frontpage cover image likening former and potentially future President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. It was actually a series, "What American Fascism Would Look Like." Such a series is not only a display of dangerous rhetoric, but the laziest kind, considering we've heard for years that Trump is Hitler.
The outlet received plenty of backlash, but nevertheless justified it with a lengthy post shared over X as part of a thread to promote not just the series, but also the outlet.
The post admits in part a sense of laziness about the narrative. "Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, 'He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight,'" it reads at one point.
"We unreservedly choose the latter course. And so we have assembled herein some of our leading intellectual historians of fascism[,]" the post goes on to point out in a way that would be laughable if not engaging in such a dangerous example of inflammatory rhetoric days before Trump would be shot.
The post even concludes by daring to challenge those who would take issue with their narrative. "The scenarios they describe are certainly grim. We dare you to say, after reading these pieces, that they are impossible," the post says about these supposed experts.
We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all,… pic.twitter.com/x79Rkh86O1
— The New Republic (@newrepublic) July 7, 2024
In addition to the close to 13,000 replies and close to 3,000 quoted reposts, there's also been screenshots and trends over X taking issue with the series and cover image. Amy for our sister site of Twitchy highlighted some of the best reactions when the piece came out.
The "What American Fascism Would Look Like" series which features that iconic photo of Trump with a Hitler mustache actually includes multiple articles, including ones such as "Yes, That's Right: American Fascism," which is a zoomed in photo of Trump's eyebrows and includes a subheadline arguing against debating the issue. There's another post on "The 'Day One' Dictatorship," in reference to comments Trump made "in jest," as well as one on "The Permanent Counterrevolution" which shows Trump side by side with Italty's Benito Mussolini, and one on "The End of Civic Compasion." Even Brian Stelter, formerly of CNN, wrote a piece on "Revenge and Freedom From Fact."
Less than a week after the post promoting the series, Trump was nearly assassinated at his rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania. A man at the rally, Corey Comperatore, tragically lost his life defending his wife and daughter.
Plenty took to social media to remind how ugly the rhetoric against Trump has been, including the examples comparing Trump to Hitler, which has been trending over X since the assassination attempt.
Actor James Woods also included The New Republic cover image in a video montage calling out those in the mainstream media who have vilified Trump in a way that has brought us to this moment.
More mainstream news outlets are included in the montage as well, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, and the New York Daily News.
Here is a montage of lapdog leftist media servicing their Democrat masters. Watching this disgusting cavalcade of hate from these so-called journalists, it’s surprising that President Trump has not been shot before this. pic.twitter.com/MAXhLoBiLq
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) July 14, 2024
Although The New Republic managed to include nine pieces as part of this series going after Trump, the outlet couldn't even be bothered to put out articles on their homepage about the assassination until the following day.
RealClearPolitics' Tom Bevan posted on Sunday morning how there had been no articles on their homepage about the assassination attempt.
Since Bevan's post, the outlet put out "The Trump Shooting: The Most Shocking Act of a Shockingly Violent Age," a deeply tone-deaf and almost ironic post. It has yet to be shared to the outlet's X account, however. In fact, the outlet has yet to post any news articles about the assassination attempt from its X account, and has even continued to post anti-Trump articles.
TNR, which just published an entire issue comparing Trump to Hitler, can't muster a single story this morning on the assassination attempt. pic.twitter.com/YaiEWk5jKr
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) July 14, 2024