Dec 18, 2023
Fox Host's Entire Defense IMPLODES Over Insane Trump Nazi Stunt
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade desperately attempts to runs cover for Donald Trump after Trump's anti-immigrant comments during New Hampshire rally draw instant backlash for echoing dangerous Nazi rhetoric. John Iadarola and Francesca Fiorentini break it down on The Damage Report.
- 7 minutes
President over the weekend gave
some out of speech, huge rally,
unbelievable crowd in New Hampshire,
they didn't like his rhetoric.
He was talking about the border,
he was talking about people coming from
other countries, coming from prisons and
they wanted to focus all the Sunday shows,
Lawrence, on the word he used, poison.
[00:00:15]
He was just trying to say,
we wanna keep America America.
We wanna build up the border and
find out who's coming in and
out and they tried to say that
this language was the problem.
>> Speaker 2: It is a problem,
it's literally Nazi speak, Brian Kilmeade.
Brian Kilmeade has criticized
Trump occasionally in the past.
[00:00:34]
He's supposed to be compared to other Fox
hosts, a little bit reasonable, maybe
a little incurious, a little ignorant
in general of history and all of that.
But this is at best
willful ignorance about
the sort of language that Trump is using.
When you're talking about
poisoning the blood of a nation,
[00:00:51]
that's just straight Hitler stuff.
That's all it, sorry.
He's just talking about the border,
that's all.
Why do you get so mad?
He wants to solve problems so
he says, final solution.
Why are you getting down
at him on language?
Language matters, buddy.
It definitely matters in this case,
and in particular,
[00:01:09]
the brushing off of trying to smear
all migrants as being people who
broke out of the insane asylum or
that got out of prison somehow.
This, again, because everything
has to be a conspiracy theory.
Every single migrant is not coming to
America, perhaps to safeguard their life
[00:01:27]
or have better economic opportunities or
make a better life for their kids.
No, they've all been let out of prisons
across Latin and South America and
then shipped to the border because
everything has to be the craziest,
most inspiratorial version of itself.
>> Speaker 3: But just in case, John,
you thought it was about the Americas,
[00:01:44]
he made sure to include Asia and
Africa as well.
>> That's true.
>> Speaker 3: He is racist against all
of them and he's ginning up xenophobia
against anyone who isn't white,
to say nothing of the Asians,
Africans and Latinos who are American,
[LAUGH] US-born or
[00:02:03]
naturalized or live here or
just like, yeah, it's dangerous.
And I can't because I always go here,
because we are still in the midst of a war
raging on Gaza, I can't help but
think about language, right?
And this conversation over language,
as people criticize the Israeli government
[00:02:21]
and say,
I believe in Palestinian human rights, and
are then told that that language
is somehow anti antisemitic.
Here we have a rabid, anti-Semite,
racist, xenophobe saying exactly
what he believes, and the right,
who will call the left anti-Semites,
[00:02:37]
no matter what they say is saying,
what do you mean?
It's the same thing,
all he's talking about is the border.
Don't get your panties in a bunch, right?
It's the same thing we've heard from,
this is how this gets whitewashed, right?
[00:02:52]
And sure, it's Kilmeade today,
but tomorrow it could be NPR,
do you know what I'm saying?
Tomorrow it's mainstream news.
>> Yes.
>> Speaker 3: It's like,
what I think he's saying ultimately is
that we should have strong borders.
And I think he's saying, and it's like,
no, no, no, that's not what he's saying.
[00:03:08]
But you see the way this gets
laundered and normalized.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, you need to think
about how this is being received
by the rural Americans and
Cracker Barrels around the country.
>> Yeah.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah,
it hasn't reached the point of NPR yet
but again, Kilmeade is not Sean Hannity.
[00:03:26]
He's supposed to be slightly
more reasonable than that and
here he's running cover for,
as you say, a raging anti-Semite.
Now, there are responses
that are more critical.
The Biden campaign put
out a statement saying,
tonight Donald Trump channeled his role
models as he parroted Adolf Hitler,
[00:03:41]
praised Kim Jong Un, and
quoted Vladimir Putin while running for
president on a promise to rule as a
dictator and threaten American democracy.
They pointed out that he echoed
the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and
violent white supremacists,
which is all true.
And that's good,
Biden has to say this sort of thing.
[00:03:57]
But we are in the middle of a campaign and
so
I care way less about
the statement that you put out and
more about what you are doing to stop
that guy from becoming president again.
>> Yeah.
>> Because at the end of the day,
I don't get to decide who wins this,
I have very little effect on it.
[00:04:12]
Francesca, love you, doesn't get
to decide who wins next election.
>> [LAUGH]
>> But
Biden's pretty instrumental in
determining who becomes president again.
And so if this guy is the proto dictator
that you say you believe he is,
then you better be doing everything you
can to stop him from getting into office.
[00:04:29]
And we'll be talking a bit more about
the Biden side of this later on.
I will just sum up to say that at
this point, I don't think they are.
But really fast, Chris Christie
called it disgusting, that's good,
one of the Republicans can
criticize the Nazi language.
Again, as you pointed out, in the middle
of a time where all the Republicans
[00:04:47]
are using the bombing of Gaza to pretend
that they're against antisemitism,
they have literally no problem with this.
And also I wanted to cite NYU
history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat,
author of the book Strongmen, Mussolini
to the Present, likened the statements to
fascist rhetoric, noting that Benito
Mussolini literally talked about killing
[00:05:06]
rats who are bringing infectious
diseases and communism into Italy.
Yes, so it's not just us,
the experts think it as well.
Francesca, any thoughts about,
well, is Nikki gonna criticize him?
She could use a boost, what do you think?
>> Speaker 3: I mean,
I think zooming out and just very briefly,
[00:05:24]
this is why we need a real
vision to stop fascism.
We need real antifascist movements,
an antifa movement, if you will,
although maybe not taking
that exact tone and contour.
But we need a vision that can pull
us out of this sort of, again,
[00:05:43]
this craven and also somehow alluring
ideology that as long as we hate and
exclude everybody else
that isn't like a white,
christian, wealthy person in this country,
[00:05:59]
man, then everything
will be all hunky dory.
No, we need a real vision and
I believe that vision is a multi-racial,
multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy,
right?
[00:06:14]
The kinds that this country was ostensibly
founded on, although Republicans say, no,
no, no, it should be a Christian nation.
Our founding fathers were Christian.
No, they explicitly said there was
a separation of church and state.
So all I'm saying is we need more
than Biden, we need a real movement.
We need something to combat this
otherwise, they've got a movement, man.
[00:06:32]
They've got a vision.
>> Yeah.
>> Speaker 3: They've got organizers doing
their work, we need that same
countervailing force but for good.
>> Yeah, and not too many years ago, we
felt like we had at least a start on that,
like something that could be built on and
right now, I don't know.
[00:06:50]
I don't know who's leading that,
I don't know who's working on that.
There are things out there.
>> Sure.
>> Speaker 2: But a movement of the sort
that you're talking about, I don't see
it right now, and I would love to,
love to discuss it, bring people on.
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The Damage Report: December 18, 2023
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