Trump is not Hitler and neither was George W. Bush

James Robbins:

Accused Pittsburgh synagogue killer Robert Bowers is a raving anti-Semitic white nationalist who also despises President Trump. This might sound confusing to people who bought into the tiresome “Trump is Hitler” media narrative, but it makes perfect sense.

Bowers faces 29 criminal charges, including 11 for homicide, after a shooting rampage at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh on Saturday. There is no mystery as to his motive; he left a long record of neo-Nazi-inspired anti-Semitic ranting on social media, and shouted “all Jews must die” when he opened fire.

Naturally some critics rushed to blame President Trump for "inspiring" the attack. The left has long charged that Trump is a Nazi sympathizer spouting hateful rhetoric and his supporters are fascist enablers. And critics say that those Trump voters who support his economic or foreign policies are simply too stupid to know they are bigots.

But actual Nazis disagree. Bowers was explicit in his dislike of the president, saying he did not vote for him and had never “owned, worn or even touched a (Make America Great Again) hat." Challenging the media narrative that President Trump praised Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville in 2017, Bowers agreed with another extremist that the president had “betrayed” right wing radical protesters by “comparing them with a violent mob.”

When Trump said he was a “nationalist” at a Texas rally last week the left exploded with the usual Hitler-this and dog whistle-that criticisms. Bowers made clear that from the extremist point of view the president is not a nationalist but a “globalist” controlled by a Jewish conspiracy.
Linking Trump to anti-Semitism is factually incorrect and morally wrong. You never heard it before he ran for office. He has a history of giving generously to Jewish charities, including the Anti-Defamation League, and he received the Jewish National Fund’s “Tree of Life” award.

This is a president whose high-profile daughter Ivanka is an observant modern orthodox Jew, and whose Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner is a trusted White House envoy and personal adviser. President Trump also has longstanding ties to Israel’s conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and, unlike three of his Oval Office predecessors, made good on a pledge to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

And while Trump did not garner support from the broad Jewish community in the 2016 election, he was overwhelmingly popular among more the observant Orthodox segment, whom one community activist compared to working class “Rust Belt voters.”
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The suggestion that Trump is Hitler or a Nazi or someone who sympathizes with Nazis is an insult aimed at pleasing the intellectually lazy left.  They start from the false premise that the Nazis were "conservatives."  In fact, the term is short for National Socialists.  In fact, they governed much closer to Obama than Trump when you consider the control freak regulations both adhered to and their management of the economy.

One of the reasons the media sometimes uses this lazy trope is because it thinks it is so special that it gets to be a critic and its targets cannot respond in kind and criticize it.  The media does not think it has to be fair in its treatment of Trump.  Trump being a counterpuncher thus responds in kind.