Over the weekend Donald Trump was at it again, which is to say spouting the kind of things Adolf Hitler used to. At a rally in New Hampshire, the former president told his adoring crowd that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of America. It that blood poisoning line sounds familiar, it’s not just because Trump used it mere weeks ago. It’s also because it was exactly how Adolf Hitler used to describe Jewish people in Mein Kampf. It’s yet another disturbing turn in Trump’s third campaign. But Stephen Colbert tried to find something darkly funny in it.
In his opening monologue for Monday’s The Late Show, Colbert began with familiar Christmas refrain, singing, “It’s beginning to look a lot like fascism.” He then played the clip from Trump’s speech, to which he took a fair amount of umbrage.
“That is absolutely disgusting,” Colbert told the crowd. “Also: Not true. The blood of our country is not being poisoned by immigrants. It’s being poisoned by dipping pizza in Ranch dressing.”
Colbert then pointed out the alarming connection to Mein Kampf, before turning to Trump’s defenders. One of them is a former advisor to Mike Pence, who argued that it’s “highly unlikely” that the famously impatient Trump ever cracked open Mein Kampf.
“Right. ‘Cause it’s a book,” Colbert added. “He probably got the version with pictures, Mein First Kampf.”
Colbert also brought up Lindsey Graham, Trump’s on-again-off-again pal, who brushed off his bud’s whole Hitler thing by saying he could “care less what language people use as long as we get it right.”
“Yeah, what language our leaders use does not and has never mattered,” interjected Colbert. “That’s why the Constitution starts with ‘We da ploo-plees of the Untided Yabba Dabba Doo bawita bawita dang da dang homina homina homina homina homina homina homina.”
As it happens, per Mediaite, on Monday saw an old Vanity Fair piece from 1990 get once again resurfaced, in which Trump’s first wife, Ivana, claimed that “from time to time” he “reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed.”
If that sounds far-fetched then in the same profile Trump himself half-admitted that he was given a Hitler book by a friend. He thought it was Mein Kampf but it was actually My New Order, a collection of his speeches. (He also claimed the friend who gave it to him was Jewish. He wasn’t.) That said, Trump swore he never read it.
“If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do,” Trump said, “ I would never read them.” What a fun guy.