Donald Trump‘s campaign has reached a point in which we’re not surprised at all about any shocking move the Republican front-runner makes. If last month he received the endorsement of a former Ku Klux Klan reader and initially avoided denying the support, the fact that this Saturday he asked supporters at a rally in Orlando, Florida, to raise their right hands and “solemnly swear” to give him their votes, is not surprising at all.
Of course, people automatically compared this to a group of Nazis saluting Adolf Hitler and his campaign reacted. According to The Washington Post, a reporter from Politico asked Donald Trump‘s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, about this comparison and her reaction was that of somebody who took this way too personal: “What a disgusting thing to ask. A disgrace.”
And this happened more than just once!
What’s more surprising, though, is that Donald Trump actually continued doing the same thing, that same day, during rallies in North Carolina and Mississippi.
“He is smart enough – he always tells us how smart he is – to know the images that this evokes,” said an article from the Times of Israel, which quoted Abe Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, calling this a “fascist gesture”.
As expected, the story started trending on social media and people all over the world reacted, claiming, once again, that they can’t explain how such thing is possible in 2016, in a country like the United States.
As far as we know, most presidential candidates have a team who’s in charge with spotting all these online trends and rapidly react, before the whole story goes viral. Well, it’s not the case with Donald Trump, as he prefers to do this all by himself, sending tweet after tweet.
Apparently, he missed this one and went to the “Today Show” unprepared, considering the response he gave when host Savannah Guthrie asked him about the comparison to the Nazi salute.
Trump claims it’s just “for fun”
“Well, I think it’s ridiculous. I mean, we’re having such a great time,” Donald Trump said. “Sometimes, we’ll do it for fun. … They’ll start screaming at me: ‘Do the swearing! Do the swearing.’ I mean, they’re having such a great time. … Honestly, until this phone call, I didn’t know it was a problem,” the Republican added.
And like this wasn’t enough to question what kind of supporters he has, Donald Trump continued in the same tone. “Almost everybody in the room raises their hand. We’re having a good time. I never knew it was a problem.”
Finally, when asked if the comparison with Hitler was bothering him, Mr. Trump once again claimed that he wouldn’t do the salute if it’s offensive, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that the crowd was actually asking him to do it. Still, he wanted to mention that he will reconsider using this pledge at future rallies, says The Washington Post.
Will we see the salute again?
“Well, I’ll certainly look into it,” Trump said. “I mean, I’d like to find out if that’s true. But I would certainly look into it because I don’t want to offend anybody. But I can tell you that it’s been amazingly received, well received. But I will certainly look into that.”
To sum up, everything we want to say is that the future of the United States might be decided by people who find a salute made popular by one of history’s greatest madmen. Let that sink in for a bit.
