Discussion: Trump: I Didn't Know Hand-Raising Pledge At Rallies Was A Problem (VIDEO)

He’ll get one of his Jew lawyers on it…

You won’t believe what he’s finding!!

Again, what I cannot fathom, be Der Trump insane or just calculating, the danger he’s potentially creating around his beloved Jewish-convert daughter and grandchildren among his rabid followers…

This is basically a ridiculous thing.

To hell with the hands. Americans love pledges & oaths; we love raising our hands. We love to be seen doing it. It’s lazy and it’s ridiculous to compare this phenomenon to Nazism, as though it’s something not endemic to our culture, and has to be borrowed from German history. We’ve got a grand legacy of scum filth right here at home.

What this is, is it’s creepy. Candidates should not be asking for pledges or commitments from voters. They should not be threatening voters not to break their promise. And they should answer the damn questions they’ve been asked. Fat chance.

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I agree completely with this. I don’t think Trump is of the same cloth as Hitler by any stretch of the imagination. But I think maybe where the confusion lies is that it’s really not so much Trump the man (an entertainer) as it is his supporters and the climate he’s created with his rhetoric. I don’t know the mindset of all his supporters, but I’d suspect quite a few are true believers who don’t see him for what we see and know him as. They love the fact that somebody is finally on stage saying what they think. I honestly believe that if Trump were to make a statement about rounding up Muslims and Mexicans to put in camps for extermination, he’d get quite a bit of applause. He’s already helped incite violence, and hate groups have latched onto his messaging in their own recruitment efforts. Even if Trump himself thinks he’s clowning around, a lot of people don’t and that’s a bit of cause for alarm. Those people have always existed, but Trump has lionized them.

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It’s a classic case of the frog in boiling water scenario. In a matter of months, Trump has progressed from late-night joke to rallies with tens of thousands pledging personal loyalty to him with upraised salutes as he rants about torture “and worse for those savages.”

Yes, he started out as entertainment, but now he’s single-handedly destroying one of the major political parties in our country. It’s not funny anymore. The Hitler/Mussolini comparisons continue to mount. I agree that there’s no need to go overboard with every outrageous thing Trump says or does, but I have become quite wary of him. Hitler didn’t gas Jews until many years after he started demonizing them. Even then, many Germans didn’t believe it was really happening until they liberated the camps, and today we all ask ourselves “How could they not have known?” Let’s keep our eyes open.

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PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE let’s please not get ensnared by MrComment’s red herrings. The question was and is whether Trump is consciously using Nazi-style saluting in his rallies. Poindexter believes not, I disagree, but it’s a reasonable way to talk about it. MrComments sails in and says HITLER AND TRUMP ARE DIFFERENT HOW SILLY CAN YOU BE and suddenly the discussion gets knocked off the rails. The parallels between the Trump phenomenon and various authoritarian, fascist, or totalitarian movements have been chewed over for months now. I think if we can keep this thread focused on whether Trump’s denials of any knowledge of a historic parallel to the hand raising sound plausible, we’ll be in good shape. Otherwise it’s Theadjacking City, Population: Us. Sorry but I’ve seen this happen too many times.

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You’re so cute when you channel Ozzie and Harriet.

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He’ll claim he never met the guy. Not sure what his organization was all about.

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Thank you. Was about to make the boiling frog analogy. The rhetoric and the breaking of norms along with the media normalization of mass deportations, of torturing enemies and killing their families, xenophobic nationalism, cult of personality…

More than a little disturbing.

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He’s since repeated the thing about raising your hand and pledging fealty to him even though he’s been called out on it days ago. Its been commented on that his actions in his campaign are being seen as an offensive gesture, reminiscent of the facsimile of a fascist salute, demonstrating how churlish and offensive he’s been…and yet, he still he does it without any self-reflection or outward concern. I believe this is because negative attention gets him attention all the same in the public square. He plays dumb to the media when interviewed and then goes on to attack the media to his crowds. A two-fer as far as he’s concerned.

His supporters have been systematically trained to expect that while the mainstream media is always against tRump, they are told to see this as just another way to validate that the media is always against him (and thereby by extension, his supporters) over trivial matters not worthy of scrutiny…This leads them to eat up whatever he has to offer even more so. So any negative attention is just as valuable as positive attention to him, in the same way a belligerent and irascible child tries to get anyone to pay attention over naughty behavior, no matter the outcome because in the end, its better than simply being ignored…which he knows now the media can’t do with him as the GOP frontrunner.

Its a terrible conundrum for the media now, who woke up way to late to try to take this man to task, if they ever even contemplated that…which due to their ratings game I seriously doubt.

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TPM:

“Well, I think that’s a big, big stretch,” Trump responded before again noting how large his campaign rallies have been.

Can’t be that big a stretch if half the country is making it. Most of us aren’t limber enough, on average, to stretch very far.

Adolph H’s speeches were also well-received and loved by their audiences.
Mussolini started the raised-right-arm fascist salute and Hitler took it and magnified it.

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As a native of Germany (Munich, no less) I’ve gotta say that is some over the top fake fucking outrage. This was like a boy scout pledge or some such shit. It was done with humor.

Y’all oughta be way more pissed off over the constant stream of lies regarding Obama coming from the GOP which has influenced millions of Americans to hate a president who saved their fucking country.

Also, please stop comparing Trump to Hitler and Mussolini. Those assholes actually believed in the shit they were flinging. Trump is a troll, and an unbelievable gift to the Democrats that the feckless, gutless fucks frankly don’t deserve.

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THaNK YOU @The_Mask !!!

From the link"

“Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told
her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a
book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a
cabinet by his bed … Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up
through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a
master propagandist,” Marie Brenner wrote.
(bolding mine)

Phony??
OK then, what was phony about the invasion of Poland I might ask? I think that is a very revealing phrase right there. Phony war of 1939 … I wonder if Ivana and Donald are in denial that 50 million people died due to Hitler’s megalomania and lust for power.
It seems so
Trump didn’t know the stiff arm salute conjures up some very bad feelings even 75 years on? What happened then to his “Greatest Memory Ever in the History of mankind” as he himself said in words close to what I put in quotes?

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The problem is that while Drumpf may or may not have visions of gas chambers (not a mind reader) his legions of supporters have rallied to his side over the rhetoric about walls, torture, mass deportations, banning a specific religion (the second largest in the world I might add). That is a real concern. And why do you not take what Drumpf says when he says these things at face value?

Is it because you don’t want to entertain them because such views and positions are repugnant to you (and me)…?

Because that is the disconnect. You are talking about you, not Drumpf or his followers that want mass deportations. That literally cheer at the thought of torturing enemies. Think about that. They physically attack protesters at their rallies.

Drumpf is tapping into dark impulses. He is playing with fire. Whether he is a child doing it for attention or is a real arsonist at heart is no comfort when a fire is being set.

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Yes. Another example in in the last debate when he responded to Rubio’s small hands comment “I have to say this, I have to say this. He hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands. I have never heard of this.” From the guy who’s been mailing gold Sharpie circled photos of his hands to the Spy magazine writer since 1986.

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That is what is at the heart of tRump’s problems! He doesn’t know ANYTHING about anything!

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Trumpler Yooth…It’s Huuuuge!

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The media reticence with obvious historic parallels has the same goal and one can imagine, if Trump wins tonight, the Nazi salute stories will wane…Just like the Obama fist bump cartoon stories faded into a joyful bipartisan presidency but without death camps.