Trump says he’s ‘opposite of a Nazi’ as toxic MSG rally poisons America – Times of India

TOI Correspondent from Washington: MAGA Supremo Donald Trump asserted on Monday that he is the “opposite of a Nazi” as reverberations from a vile and toxic rally he headlined at Madison Square Garden on Sunday continued to rattle the US political arena.
“The newest line from Kamala and her campaign is that everyone who isn’t voting for her is a Nazi,” Trump told a typically raucous rally in Atlanta, fabricating an attribution to his opponent. “I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi,” he added, going on to accuse Harris of being a “fascist,” which is what some of his own former aides have called him.
Trump and some of his allies were visibly rattled by the shock and revulsion Sunday’s MSG rally caused across the political spectrum, with some speakers using filthy, vitriolic language to denigrate Kamala Harris and minorities. Many commentators pointed to the use of extremist symbols, idioms, and language to argue the gathering was redolent of a neo-Nazi rally.
Political analysts also noted the use at the rally of the song Dixie, which is considered by many as a Confederate anthem celebrating slavery and secession, but which is cherished by some conservatives as an ode to Southern pride. The song is banned in many institutions because it is evocative of a racist America that condoned slavery.
While the Trump campaign regretted the crass joke by a comedian who referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage,” it notably made no comment on other offensive jibes about Latinos, Black Americans, Jews, and Muslims, and coarse and vulgar references to Kamala Harris.
“These Latinos, they love making babies, too…..There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country,” the comedian Peter Hinchcliffe said at the rally in a “joke” resonant with Trump’s charge that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
While there has been much commentary on which demographic — women, blacks, Muslim-Americans, Jewish Americans, Indian-Americans etc — could tilt the elections one way or the other, immediate attention is now on Latinos, particularly Puerto Ricans, who form an influential voting bloc in many states.
Fortunately for the Trump campaign, nearly 50 million Americans — about 30 per cent of the expected turnout — have already voted in early polling. But the fiasco still leaves it vulnerable in what is being called an “October surprise” which could be a setback or turnaround in a presidential campaign.
The Harris campaign and its liberal and moderate supporters are furiously pounding the issue as both sides wheel out polls and cherrypick surveys showing them ahead, even as they gear up for a electoral gridlock and legal challenges on November 5/6. Many political mavens fear that November 6 could be the new January 6 when Trump stormtroopers besieged the US Capitol to protest a process that formalized a Biden victory in the 2020 election.
In an effort to draw a contrast with that event, Kamala Harris is holding a rally on Tuesday evening at the Ellipse, which is diametrically opposite to the Capitol, and where Trump’s provocative speech on January 6 let loose his MAGA mob on the seat of US legislature. Harris aides say she will lay out in clear terms her vision for the future, warning that a second Trump presidency would be more dangerous than the first because he would be “more unhinged and more unchecked.”