Recently Donald Trump has instituted another supposed gag to rev up his followers, asking them to take a loyalty pledge at his rallies. Not surprising, he's been criticized by many over this action which resemble Hitler and the Nazis.
Abraham Foxman, a former director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Times of Israel in a story published earlier on Monday that the scene was reminiscent of a salute to Hitler.
“As a Jew who survived the Holocaust, to see an audience of thousands of people raising their hands in what looks like the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute is about as offensive, obnoxious and disgusting as anything I thought I would ever witness in the United States of America,” Foxman said.
“We’ve seen this sort of thing at rallies of neo-Nazis. We’ve seen it at rallies of white supremacists. But to see it at a rally for a legitimate candidate for the presidency of the United States is outrageous.”
This morning on The Today Show, he was asked about his loyalty oath and as usual The Donald feigned all knowledge and acted shocked that this would offend anyone.
"Honestly, until this phone call, I didn't realize it was a problem," the Republican front-runner said Tuesday in a live interview on TODAY.
Trump claimed the crowds simply were "having a good time" and even demanded he lead them in the pledge.
"If it's offensive, if there's anything wrong with it, I wouldn't do it," he said.
Trump, who has been criticized for comments he has made singling out Mexicans and Muslims, called it "a big, big stretch" for people to compare images of his rallies with those of Jews being scapegoated during Nazi-occupied Germany.
But he said he will look into the claims and may reconsider the pledge at future events.
"I'll certainly look into it because I don't want to offend anybody. It's been amazingly received, very well received," he said.
I'm sure many Germans had a really good time swearing an oath to Hitler before his Night Of the Long Knives:
The Night of the Long Knives (German: Nacht der langen Messer (help·info)), sometimes called Operation Hummingbird or, in Germany, the Röhm Putsch (German spelling: Röhm-Putsch), or sometimes mockingly Reichsmordwoche[1] (Reich Murder Week), was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political extra-judicial executions. Leading figures of the left-wing Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), along with its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were killed, as were prominent conservative anti-Nazis (such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had suppressed Adolf Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923). Many of those killed were leaders of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary Brownshirts.
When Savannah Guthrie asked him if he would stop doing it, he said he'll look into it.
