In a private address to donors on Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, former President Donald Trump said President Joe Biden was running a “Gestapo administration,” according to the New York Times that obtained an audio recording of the event.
“These people are running a Gestapo administration,” Trump said, “And it’s the only thing they have. And it’s the only way they’re going to win, in their opinion, and it’s actually killing them. But it doesn’t bother me.”
Trump suggested the White House is using Gestapo tactics, pinning on the administration the responsibility for the avalanche of civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions he is facing, including his ongoing election tampering criminal trial and fraud trial in New York, and prosecution of his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
An examination of the historical record would suggest that Trump is hyper-exaggerating. In the months following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Gestapo agents went from door to door in search of the nazi party’s enemies, arresting Socialists, Communists, and trade unionists, some of whom were killed. By the middle of 1933, the Nazi Party remained the only functioning political party, and nearly all organized opposition to the regime had been eliminated. Democracy was dead in Germany.
So, like I said, Trump was exaggerating.
North Dakota’s Republican Governor Doug Burgum told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that “This was a short comment deep into the thing that wasn’t really central to what he was talking about.” He added that A majority of Americans,” Burgum said, “feel like the trial that he’s in right now is politically motivated.”
Burgum is one of the senior GOP officials seeking to be nominated as Trump’s Vice President.
Trump Truthed on Monday: “Biden just Indicted Henry Cuellar because the Respected Democrat Congressman wouldn’t play Crooked Joe’s Open Border game. He was for Border Control, so they said, ‘Let’s use the FBI and DOJ to take him out!’ This is the way they operate. They’re a bunch of D.C. Thugs, and at some point, they will be paying a very big price for what they have done to our Country. CROOKED JOE BIDEN IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY! (sic.)”
The Justice Department revealed on Friday that Texas Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar and his wife face indictments for conspiracy and receiving close to $600,000 in bribes from foreign entities. Prosecutors claim that Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, started accepting these bribes as early as December 2014, originating from an oil and gas company owned by the government of Azerbaijan and a bank based in Mexico City.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said on Sunday, “Instead of echoing the appalling rhetoric of fascists, lunching with Neo Nazis, and fanning debunked conspiracy theories that have cost brave police officers their lives, President Biden is bringing the American people together around our shared democratic values and the rule of law – an approach that has delivered the biggest violent crime reduction in 50 years.”
If you avert your eyes from hundreds of colleges and universities where violence and other crimes have been going unchecked for seven months.
In another Truthing, Trump cited Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election and a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies Commission, who said, “TRUMP’S NY PROSECUTION IS A BOGUS CASE BY A BOGUS PROSECUTOR…(sic.) Neither the FEC nor the Justice Department ever filed an enforcement action against the Trump campaign or Trump personally over the payment; specifically, because it was not a campaign-related expense. You know what would have led to enforcement actions? If Trump had actually claimed this was a campaign-related expense and had used campaign funds to make the payment, I have no doubt he would have been prosecuted by the feds for the illegal use of campaign funds to pay a personal expense. That’s what former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., went to prison for after he pleaded guilty in 2013 to spending $750,000 on personal expenses.”
