WaPo Op-Ed Equates Trump's Nat'l Emergency Declaration with 'Hitler's Rise'

Nick Kangadis | February 20, 2019
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The media simply can’t help themselves. Any chance they get to slander President Donald Trump they take. A president, no matter who it is at the time, isn’t above criticism. But when it’s constant and mean spirited, not taking into account the facts, you lose all integrity as a media outlet.

The Washington Post published an op-ed on Tuesday equating Trump with Hitler, because Trump used his legal national emergency powers to secure the United States’ southern border with Mexico.

The article, written by University of Maryland history professor Jeffrey Herf, has the disingenuous title, “Emergency powers helped Hitler’s rise. Germany has avoided them ever since.

Herf was disingenuous in the fact that, while he did admit that Trump “is not a latter-day Hitler,” he still had no problem making the comparison in the title of the op-ed, which is sometimes the only thing people pay attention to.

Here’s part of what Herf wrote:

President Trump is not a latter-day Hitler. Nor does he have elaborate ideas about authoritarianism and the ills of liberal democracy, in the manner of German conservative chancellors such as Brüning or von Papen. He is not a man of ideas — but he is a bundle of authoritarian and illiberal impulses and desires. Like those German figures, he yearns for executive power unhindered by the checks and balances of a representative body. As unwise and politically disastrous as the emergency rule by Brüning and Papen were, the economic crisis and political polarization of those years were serious realities.

So, Herf seems to just be angry that Trump would dare use his executive powers to declare a national emergency at all.

President Trump has declared four national emergencies during his presidency.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), here are the first three national emergencies Trump has declared:

• Dec. 20, 2017: Blocking the Property of Persons Involved in Serious Human Rights Abuse or Corruption.

• Sept. 12, 2018: Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election.

• Nov. 27, 2018: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Nicaragua.

Do those national emergencies seem like things Hitler would do? So why wasn’t Herf and the rest of the far-left all up in arms for the first three that Trump declared?

One could surmise that the far-left is simply upset that people might not be entering the U.S. illegally as frequently as they would like. They use the Hitler comparison as a scare tactic, which has been used so often at this point that a portion of people no longer understand the gravity of the atrocities Hitler carried out in the 1930s and 1940s.

Philosopher and researcher Stefan Molyneux recently brought up a very good, factual point about the whole media fervor over Trump’s national emergency declaration:

Let’s put the pause on the panic button and just point out that national emergencies, not wars or natural disasters but other things that threaten the republic, the first order was in 1979 and American presidents have declared 58 national emergencies since then. Thrity-one of the 58 are still in effect. And so, the country has been basically in various states of emergency for almost four decades.

George W. Bush declared 13 national emergencies and Barack Obama declared 12, and most of even Barack Obama’s are still in effect. So the idea that this [Trump's national emergency declaration] is some sort of dictatorial horror show is ridiculous, because this didn’t happen every single time Barack Obama declared a national emergency.

Are any of those other presidents comparable to Hitler because they used their powers to declare national emergencies? Of course not, and they’re not according to Herf either. There was nary a mention of any other American president in his op-ed.

This guy has written books about the evils of Nazi Germany and he still doesn’t understand how dangerous his rhetoric could be. He makes historical comparisons of Trump’s action to those of the Weimar Republic post-WWI. But while Herf went on about Germany’s past, he provided no sources for the claims he makes about Trump.

Herf later revealed his true motive for his op-ed:

While his conspiracy theories [no source] encourage a fringe right wing, there is nothing comparable in this country to the Nazi Party of 1932. An insurgent left in the Democratic Party advocates “democratic socialism,” not, as was the case with the German Communist Party, a dictatorship. And as the statistics of Trump’s own government indicate [no source], there is no immigration crisis at the southern border other than a humanitarian crisis as a result of Trump’s preemptory actions and the terrible conditions in four small Central American countries that the United States and others could and should seek to address.

If there's "nothing comparable to the Nazi Party of 1932," why make the comparison in the title? It's simply to push a false narrative while actually, deep down, knowing the truth. I guess democracy really does die in darkness, doesn't it WaPo?

So, is all of this hatred thrown at Trump about his national emergency declaration about the actual national emergency or simply about continuing to actively try to take down a sitting American president? It could possibly be that the far-left are just advocates for open borders. Maybe it’s a combination of all three, because the media and college indoctrinators have a clear mission. Any way you look at it, they both get to continue to push their less-than-reputable narratives.

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