CLAIM: MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace claimed she didn’t think “any Democrat” had called President Donald Trump Adolf Hitler.
VERDICT: False. Several Democrats have used rhetoric comparing Trump to Hitler, and have suggested that he is a “wannabe Hitler.”
During an interview with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) on The Best People podcast, Wallace pointed out that Vance has previously been critical of Trump and had even labeled Trump as “America’s Hitler.”
Reuters reported that in 2016, Vance was “harshly critical of Trump, both publicly and privately.”:
He was harshly critical of Trump, both publicly and privately, in 2016 and during the opening stages of Trump’s 2017-2021 term in the White House.
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” he wrote privately to an associate on Facebook in 2016.
“JD Vance called Donald Trump, America’s Hitler,” Wallace said. “It’s not a partisan analysis. There is an intrigue there that’s been noted by JD Vance and reported on by journalists. But, you’ve put some architecture behind the parallels that involve all of us, and you’ve talked about….. the first thing you said, was people being asked for their papers, American citizens being asked to show up with papers, street vendors being asked to produce passports, rounding people up, and good people looking the other way.”
Wallace’s comments came after Pritzker talked about how people “understand that something really terrible is happening” in the United States. Pritzker also accused Trump of trying to “interfere with the 2026 elections using the military,” and stated that Trump was following a playbook “precisely” that has been “seen throughout history.”
Pritzker responded by stating that he wanted to “separate” himself from the idea that he was calling Trump Hitler, adding: “I haven’t suggested that Donald Trump is Hitler.”
“I don’t think any Democrat has,” Wallace interjected. “I actually, I think it’s a smear that they project back onto critics. JD Vance called Donald Trump ‘cultural heroin.’ He called him ‘America’s Hitler.’”
Wallace’s claim that Democrats have not called Turmp Hitler comes as Democrats such as former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), among others have made comparisons to Trump being Hitler.
Breitbart News reported in October 2019 that O’Rourke told Al Sharpton that Trump was like Hitler “regarding propaganda:”
“This idea from Goebbels and Hitler that the bigger the lie and the more often you repeat it, the more likely people are to believe it,” he said in an interview with MSNBC’s Sharpton, “that is Donald Trump to a T”:
In an interview on MSNBC in July, while talking about “Jeffrey Epstein materials,” Crockett suggested that Trump was a “wannabe Hitler.”
She added, “They want to show that they’re loyal to this, you know, I don’t even know what to call him. I’ve called him so many things, but this wannabe Hitler for sure. They want to pledge their loyalty to him, and they know that he does not want this released. I think they also are concerned about the damage that it may do. If he’s trying to hide it, they understand that it is most likely problematic for him as well as the MAGA brand, as well the Republicans. So, I don’t anticipate that they will be on board for doing anything that may harm them or their fearless leader.”
Breitbart News’s Joshua Klein also reported in December 2023 that former President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign accused Trump of “‘parroting’ Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.”
In a post on X from the “official Biden-Harris rapid response” account on X, an image titled, “Trump Parrots Hitler,” compared statements that Trump and Hitler had made.
Former Secretary of State and failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has also previously “fueled fears” that if elected to a second-term as president, Trump would act like a dictator.
