Leftists Link Trump to Hitler for Saying 'Good Genes,' but Obama Used the Same Exact Phrase
Some on the left are comparing President Donald Trump to 20th century German dictator Adolf Hitler after he told followers in Minnesota last week that they had “good genes.”
Trump was speaking in the northern Minnesota city of Bemidji on Saturday when he complimented the state’s working-class history.
“From St. Paul to St. Cloud, from Rochester to Duluth, and from Minneapolis — thank God, we still have Minneapolis — to right here, right here with all of you great people, this state was pioneered by men and women who braved the wilderness and the winters to build a better life for themselves and for their families,” the president said Saturday.
“They were tough and they were strong. You have good genes. You know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it’s about the genes, isn’t it? Don’t you believe?” he said. “The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”
Trump continued, “They didn’t have a lot of money. They didn’t have a lot of luxury, but they had grit, they had faith and they had each other. That’s what you have now. You have each other.
“They were miners and lumberjacks, fishermen and farmers, shipbuilders and shopkeepers. But they all had one thing in common: They loved their families, they loved their countries, and they loved their God.”
Minnesota is known for its blue-collar workforce and its cold winters.
The president apparently saw it fit to compliment those in his audience by invoking the memory of the tough, intuitive and hardworking people who settled Minnesota in the 19th century.
Telling people they have “good genes,” as you well know, is common colloquialism — praising them for having a good upbringing or for being naturally good-natured, reverent, beautiful or strong.
In the context Trump used it, he was calling Minnesotans tough people.
Naturally, establishment media leftists pulled out their racism meter and linked the comment to rhetoric and policy from Hitler’s Third Reich, which murdered millions in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
HuffPost ran a hit piece tying the president’s Minnesota remarks to white nationalism and anti-LGBT sentiments.
After finding enough people willing to comment and embarrass themselves, the outlet ran a story headlined “Critics Blast Trump’s ‘Good Genes’ Rally Call As A Chilling Echo Of Hitler’s Eugenics.”
HuffPost reporter Mary Papenfuss wrote, “Critics continue to tear into President Donald Trump’s shocking praise for Minnesota’s ‘good genes’ as chillingly reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s murderous eugenics policy.”
Papenfuss reported that Holocaust historian Steve Silberman described Trump’s compliment of North Star State residents as “indistinguishable from the Nazi rhetoric that led to Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ, Romani and others being exterminated.”
A representative of the leftist advocacy group J Street told HuffPost, “Again and again, President Trump and his allies publicly, gleefully embrace incredibly dangerous white nationalist tropes and ideas.”
The J Street website newsroom reads like a DNC pamphlet, so it was unsurprising that its communications director, Logan Bayroff, used the nonstory to attack Trump.
Bayroff claimed it was “clear the president’s far-right worldview poses an unprecedented threat to refugees, immigrants and vulnerable minorities in this country — one of the many reasons why he faces vehement opposition from the large majority of American Jewish voters.”
Others were critical of Trump’s compliment on Twitter:
As a historian who has written about the Holocaust, I’ll say bluntly: This is indistinguishable from the Nazi rhetoric that led to Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ, Romani and others being exterminated. This is America 2020. This is where the GOP has taken us. https://t.co/CHMLg804mp
— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) September 20, 2020
Again, Trump speaks about having “good genes.” He mentioned the “racehorse theory” and coupled it with a racist rant against refugees.
This is eugenics. It was used by Nazis to justify genocide. Today, it’s used by white nationalists – & apparently the @POTUS – to justify hate. https://t.co/UpLDnGUW3x
— Halie Soifer (@HalieSoifer) September 20, 2020
so are we gunna talk about trump referencing the racehorse (eugenics) theory? which is what hitler did when he spoke about the “superior race” being aryan… trump said his crowd of supporters from missouri had the “good genes” he straight up even went “yaknow, racehorse theory”
— katie (@ktthehesstruck) September 21, 2020
Of course, the manufactured media controversy is completely absurd.
It makes a mockery of journalism and it diminishes the pain and suffering caused by the Holocaust and other revolting works of human prejudice.
The establishment media, though, apparently has no low — nor do many Democrats.
To make the optics for Trump’s critics on this story worse, former President Barack Obama delivered an almost identical compliment while visiting a factory in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, eight years ago.
During a stop at the K’NEX toy-building facility north of Philadelphia on Nov. 30, 2012, Obama paid a compliment to employees who were busy churning out toys ahead of Christmas.
Complimenting employees, he said, “These guys are Santa’s extra elves here,” according to an archived transcript from the Obama White House.
Obama then turned his attention toward the founders of the toy-making company.
He told the employees that the company’s founder, who had recently died at 101 years old, and his family had worked hard to build a product that could also create a demand for good-paying jobs.
“So these guys have good genes in addition to inventive minds,” Obama said in a statement that is now apparently retroactively linked to Nazi eugenics, per HuffPost’s logic.
Of course, not one establishment media outlet has made an effort to go back and correct that record so that it might reflect that terms such a “good genes” are now racist.
J Street is silent on the matter.
If Democrats and the establishment media can use a compliment about the “good genes” of the people of Minnesota to generate narratives about Nazi eugenics, LGBT persecution and discrimination against disabled people and American immigrants, what else are they capable of conjuring up?
Being a Minnesotan is not a race or an ethnicity, so one could argue that HuffPost and J Street engaged in dehumanizing an entire state of people by painting them with a broad brush.
But Trump’s critics would probably compare Minnesota schoolchildren to the Hitler Youth if they thought it would help them get Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden elected.
Remember Nicholas Sandmann? The left has proven that even kids aren’t safe in its endless drive to damage the president.
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