On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account shared a new campaign video created by a random fan. The video featured fake snapshots of future newspaper headlines predicting widespread prosperity under a subsequent Trump presidency. The creator used a preexisting newspaper template and simply replaced some of the headlines, but some of the original text was still visible, and eagle-eyed users spotted a curious phrase: “the creation of a unified Reich.”
This prompted many, many, many people on X to proclaim that Trump had endorsed “the creation of a unified Reich,” with reference to the Third Reich, another name for Adolf Hitler’s Nazi government. The anti-Trump political group The Lincoln Project accused the former president of “openly copying Nazi language.” ABC reported that the ad used language “from Nazi Germany” and “referenced Adolf Hitler.” CNN’s Manu Raju confronted random Republicans in Congress and demanded that they answer for the advertisement. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D–Md.) said that Trump had used an “antisemitic dogwhistle.” Even Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (no relation) opined that this was yet another example of hidden Nazi symbology embedded within the Trump campaign.
The Trump campaign disavowed the ad and deleted the Truth Social post.
But as it turns out, the assertion that Trump was tacitly endorsing some form of Nazi government is highly misleading, if not outright false. The video was made using a newspaper template that is widely available, and that template includes references to the world wars. Some have suggested the template actually refers to WWI, not WWII.
To be clear, the template is just that—a template. The point of the ad is obviously not to suggest that Trump’s policies have anything to do with the preexisting headlines.
Hellbound and Down 