Former President Donald Trump drew fire this weekend as he used more historically painful and pointed language in describing his perceived enemies who, he says, “live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”
Vermin is the loaded term here — it was a common vocabulary choice in the murderous antisemitism of Nazi leader Adolph Hitler. With its disgraceful history, such language can expect broad condemnation from every walk of political life — even white nationalists in American government disavow any overtly positive views of Nazis.
But Trump’s conduct was notably not condemned by Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel. Given the chance to slam Trump’s “vermin” rhetoric, McDaniel demurred, saying instead: “I’m not going to comment on candidates and their campaign messaging.”
McDaniel punting that question — an alarmingly easy one by any publicly held moral standard — was pure anathema to former U.S. Representative Liz Cheney, who used another loaded Nazi-associated word to describe McDaniel’s positioning: “collaborating.”
Cheney, bewildered and affronted, writes: “when @GOPChairwoman refuses to condemn the GOP’s leading candidate for using the same Nazi propaganda that mobilized 1930s-40s Germany to evil, it’s fair to assume she’s collaborating.”
When @GOPChairwoman refuses to condemn the GOP’s leading candidate for using the same Nazi propaganda that mobilized 1930s-40s Germany to evil, it’s fair to assume she’s collaborating. History will judge Ronna McDaniel and every Republican who is appeasing this dangerous man. https://t.co/f4MMPoreFc
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) November 13, 2023
As the Holocaust Encyclopedia writes about collaborating and collaborators:
German authorities required the assistance of the Axis nations and of local collaborators in the regions they occupied to implement the ‘Final Solution.’ Collaborators committed some of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust era.
