fact finder
A video released by Trump’s campaign team is causing a stir in the USA. President Biden accuses his challenger of using Nazi language. However, there is a more plausible explanation for the clip.
It is a typical, often overused stylistic device: filming animated headlines to document a development. This cliché was also used in a video that Donald Trump’s campaign team published on Monday on its own social network Truth Social.
The video was originally posted on a Trump fan’s X channel.
The headlines depicted therein are intended to show how the world is changing for the better after a possible Trump victory in the presidential election: They promise a booming economy, falling taxes, closed borders, deportations of 15 million illegal immigrants, the end of all wars and return on law and order: The American dream is back, that’s the conclusion.
An empire under Trump?
In addition to the bold headlines, there is another, smaller headline: “Industrial Strength significantly increased driven by the creation of a unified Reich”, which provoked strong reactions – in the In the USA, the German term “Reich” is primarily associated with the Nazi regime.
US President Joe Biden cited it as an example of inflammatory comments with which Trump was sowing discord in the country: “This is Hitler’s language – not America’s.” The threat posed by Trump’s second term in office is greater than during his first presidency, Biden said.
The video was deleted a day after it was published. Trump’s campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was not an official campaign video. Rather, a campaign employee found it online and shared it while the president himself was in court in New York.
Trump is accordingly prejudiced
In fact, Trump has repeatedly used the language of the Third Reich. He denounced political opponents as “vermin” or claimed that some migrants were not human and were “poisoning the blood of our country.” He also invited racists and a Holocaust denier to the White House during his time in office. In this context, the headline was interpreted as a direct allusion to the German Empire.
The headline template can be purchased online.
Headline probably actually a coincidence
However, there is a more plausible explanation: a so-called template was used for the video, a template into which you can insert any title lines. The rest of the text came from various historical articles, apparently chosen at random.
You can then read the entire headline from the provider of the video: “German industrial strength significantly increased after 1871 driven by the creation of a unified Reich” (Strength of the German Industry after 1871 massively increased, made possible by the creation of a unified empire). The headline refers to the founding of the German Empire in 1871, not to the Nazi era.