Why Nazi comparisons triggered Trump after Charlie Kirk’s assassination

President Donald Trump on Sept. 11. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh September 11, 2025

For years, Donald Trump has bristled at accusations that he coddles — or at least turns a blind eye to — Nazis and fascists.

Now the assassination of an ally has given him the pretext to silence his accusers.

The president, on Wednesday evening, blamed Charlie Kirk’s death on violence incited by what he called years of Nazi name-calling directed at conservative voices, and said he would use his office to come after those he blamed for the rhetoric.

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”

There is no evidence yet of what motivated the shooter, who remains at large. Kirk has tangled over the years with the left and with the far right.

Trump, in his 3-minute address, listed a litany of recent attacks on the right, including an assassination attempt on him last year in which the motive was never established. He did not list any attacks on the left, although a gunman assassinated a Democrat, the former speaker of the Minnesota House, and her husband as recently as June. He also did not mention other recent high-profile attacks, including one on Josh Shapiro, the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania; one killing a young couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum; and a firebombing in Boulder of people marching for the hostages in Gaza.

Kirk, 31, frequently characterized himself as a defender of Jews and Israel, even as he faced criticism for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and amplifying far-right voices. The Anti-Defamation League had called Kirk’s group, Turning Point USA, a “vast platform for extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists” and said it promoted Christian nationalism.

By Thursday, Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, was on X, asking Americans to bring to his attention “foreigners” who were “making light” of the assassination of Kirk, whose Turning Point youth movement Trump has credited with helping return him to the presidency. Within minutes, a poster identified a South African living in the Washington, D.C., area who had noted that Kirk opposed gun control. Landau replied with an image projecting the State Department insignia as if it were the Batman signal, and a slogan in Spanish meaning “visa removal.”

Trump’s bid to redirect attention to political rhetoric echoes past moments in his career when debates over Nazism and antisemitism took center stage. It underscores why the Nazi label continues to strike such a nerve with him.

February 2016

As the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary, Trump drew criticism for initially refusing to disavow David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who endorsed him and made derogatory comments about Jews.

Jason Greenblatt, a longtime Trump Organization employee whom Trump eventually tapped as his top Middle East peace envoy, recalled later that he felt a responsibility to go to Trump and seek clarification.

Trump later called New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman to condemn Duke. In her 2022 memoir, Haberman recalled Trump telling her he was with his “two Jewish lawyers,” referring to David Friedman and Greenblatt, who had advised him on Jewish issues. He issued a statement denouncing antisemitism. When critics said the statement was not wholehearted, Trump added that he “totally disavows” Duke’s remarks.

October 2016

In the final days of the presidential campaign, Trump was criticized for running a TV ad with flashing images of Jewish financial figures as symbols of a “global power structure.” Former Sen. Al Franken, a Jewish Democrat from Minnesota, called Trump’s closing argument “something of a German shepherd whistle” and likened it to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The ADL accused Trump of peddling anti-Jewish stereotypes to motivate his far-right supporters and listed a number of neo-Nazis, who were outspoken Trump supporters, who aimed antisemitic tweets at reporters and broadcasters. Friedman denied there were antisemitic figures among Trump’s supporters and called the ADL leadership “morons.”

February 2017 

In the first month of his presidency, Trump came under fire for omitting Jews from a Holocaust Remembrance Day statement. The Republican Jewish Coalition and the right-wing Zionist Organization of America joined mainstream Jewish organizations criticizing the administration. The White House blamed Boris Epshteyn, a Jewish adviser to Trump, for drafting the statement.

August 2017

In the first year of his presidency, Trump was widely condemned for saying that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. In his first public comments about the Charlottesville violence, Trump failed to condemn the neo-Nazi groups that descended on the city and chanted “Jews will not replace us.” He eventually condemned neo-Nazis, but continued to insist that there were Confederate history buffs among the protesters, although the march was overwhelmingly composed of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

Trump’s Jewish daughter, Ivanka, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, along with other Jewish allies, privately and publicly pressed him to more clearly condemn the marchers. Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and a longtime friend, reportedly urged Trump to say he “misspoke” about the events in Charlottesville. “Don’t go there,” Trump replied angrily.

Trump has since insisted that the “both sides” controversy has been “debunked.” Kushner wrote in his 2022 book that the media took Trump’s words “out of context.”

October 2018 

Following the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Trump again came under scrutiny when critics said his rhetoric about migrants, accusing them of plotting an “invasion,” echoed language used by white nationalists and the shooter.

Trump called the shooting “an antisemitic attack at its worst” and said the “scourge of antisemitism cannot be ignored.”

April 2019

Joe Biden launched what would be his successful bid to defeat Trump by saying he was spurred by his disgust with Trump’s equivocations after the deadly Charlottesville march.

“I had no intention of running for president again — until I saw those folks coming out of the fields in Virginia carrying torches and carrying Nazi banners and literally singing the same vile rhyme that they used in Germany in the early ’30s,” Biden told a reporter in 2022.

Biden again deployed Charlottesville as a central theme in his reelection campaign, until he withdrew in July 2024.

September 2020 

In a televised debate with Biden, Trump refused to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, and singled out the Proud Boys, a racist and antisemitic group. “Stand back and stand by,” Trump said. The phrase ricocheted through far-right networks, further fueling accusations that the president was coddling extremists.

A Jewish Democratic Council of America ad contrasted images from the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1930s with visuals from the four years of the Trump presidency. The ADL condemned the ad as offensive.

Jan. 6, 2021

The insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol seeking to reverse Biden’s victory brought Nazi imagery into the halls of Congress. Rioters wore shirts bearing antisemitic slogans, including a Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt. Antisemitic rhetoric also swirled through the crowds before the Capitol was breached. “We are standing up to the evil globalists such as George Soros,” a former Breitbart News reporter told a group the night before. Rep. Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, praised Adolf Hitler.

Democrats and some Republicans accused Trump of spurring the riot. The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump over his role in Jan. 6, although the Senate did not convict him. Some top Republican Jewish donors even said Trump must fully exit the stage to rebuild the party.

November 2022 

Trump dined at his Mar-a-Lago residence with Ye just as the rapper, formerly known as Kanye West, was intensifying his antisemitic attacks on Jews. Joining Ye and Trump was Nick Fuentes, a prominent white supremacist and Holocaust denier.

Trump’s Jewish allies once again urged him to distance himself from antisemites, but this time, he was not accommodating. Instead, he criticized Jewish leaders with common antisemitic tropes. He said his Jewish critics “lack loyalty” and “should be ashamed of themselves” for not appreciating his pro-Israel policies in his first term.

2024 election

Multiple times during his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump accused American Jews of disloyalty to Israel and said that “any Jewish person who votes for Democrats hates their religion.” Trump also invoked the Soros-as-puppeteer conspiracy in dozens of fundraising emails.

During the campaign, John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, confirmed on the record that Trump had told him that “Hitler did some good things” and expressed admiration for “German generals.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, who had succeeded Biden as the Democratic nominee for president, called Trump a “fascist.”

Trump faced backlash for allowing his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to host several events organized by a Nazi sympathizer, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who had been sentenced to four years in prison for participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

Trump held a mass campaign rally at the iconic Madison Square Garden in midtown Manhattan, and Democrats said the event was reminiscent of the infamous 1939 pro-Nazi rally at the same venue.

The Lincoln Project, a political action committee launched by a group of “never Trump” Republicans in 2019, aired a TV ad that drew parallels between Trump’s campaign and Hitler’s regime in Nazi Germany.

Trump himself compared the federal indictment on the 2020 election interference to the tactics used by the German Nazi regime, and his allies likened the FBI’s raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in the classified documents case to Nazism.

JD Vance, tapped as Trump’s running mate in 2024, faced media scrutiny for having referred to Trump as a potential “American Hitler” in 2016. Vance said during the vice presidential debate last October that he was wrong and misspoke about Trump. Vance also declined to condemn Trump’s dinner with West and Fuentes.

March 2025

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has emerged as a prominent voice of resistance to Trump, has repeatedly invoked Nazi Germany in criticizing the administration’s policies.

It took the Nazis 53 days “to dismantle a constitutional republic,” Pritzker said in a speech at the state legislature.