WND's Politician-Nazi Double Standard, Biden Edition

WorldNetDaily's David Kupelian can't stop complaining that people have likened Donald Trump to Hitler -- but he was silent when his boss, Joseph Farah, went Godwin on President Biden by declaring, "There's a Nazi living in the White House."

By Terry Krepel
Posted 10/30/2023

Most people understand that the current super-heated rhetoric being dished out by Democratic Party presidential candidates and others just amounts to cynical political calculation – intended to help Democrats regain the White House and the Senate, and therefore the courts, next year.

Yet, there is a very clear, if sometimes unspoken, additional message inherent in such rhetoric. Stay with me here:

* Call the president names – “he’s a racist,” “a bigot” or “xenophobe” – and the unspoken but clear message is: “He’s a person of bad character, unworthy of being president, and must be defeated at the ballot box next year.”

* Call the president a criminal – “he colluded with the Russians,” “obstructed justice” or “cheated on his taxes” – and the unspoken but clear message is: “He is guilty of impeachable offences and must be removed from office by Congress, and then criminally prosecuted once he’s out of office.”

* But what about continually calling the president another Adolf Hitler, a genocidal monster who murdered 11 million people?

This utterly deranged comparison started back in 2016, when, as this writer reported, no fewer than five different Washington Post writers likened Trump to Hitler during the run-up to the election. Today, the drumbeat has grown ever more brazen and hardcore, with recent examples including CNN host Don Lemon comparing Trump to Hitler on-air and Democrat presidential candidate “Beto” O’Rourke hysterically likening the Trump administration to “the Third Reich.”

Now, ask yourself honestly: If you were a German citizen living in Germany during the Third Reich, what would be the only truly moral response to Adolf Hitler?

We all know the answer.

There were at least 16 different plots to assassinate Hitler, including most famously “Operation Valkyrie” (the so-called “20 July Plot”), which was made into a blockbuster movie starring Tom Cruise as the heroic German army officer, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg. Even the revered Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was hanged by German authorities for his alleged role in this particular plot. The people who attempted to assassinate Hitler – to slay a vicious criminal psychopath, to stop a genocide, to end a terrible war – are rightly regarded, to this very day, all over the world, as patriots and heroes.

That, whether consciously or not, is the actual message that today’s reckless pretenders – whether they are pretend journalists desperately vying for ratings or pretend statesmen desperately vying to become leader of the free world – are broadcasting every day.

You know who else loved to describe a president as another Adolf Hitler, a genocidal monster who murdered 11 million people? The website that Kupelian manages.

Likening President Obama to Hitler or other Nazis was practically a staple attack at WND. It had a columnist, Hilmar von Campe, who practically reveled in doing so. Kupelian's boss, Joseph Farah, demanded that a minister not give the invocation at Obama's inauguration, citing Obama's "evil policies" and adding, "I'm sure you would not want to invoke God's blessing on the inauguration of a figure like Adolf Hitler, whose rise to power brought the destruction of millions of lives." Farah even worked an Obama-Hitler comparison into his bogus birther crusade, declaring that they were similarly ineligible to hold their leadership positions.

WND-published author Anita Dittman loved the comparison too, insisting that "Liberals’ blind idolization of Obama mirrored Germany’s hypnotic fascination with Hitler, Dittman said of the racist tyrant whose vitriolic rhetoric dehumanized the Jewish people as a prelude to his attempts at total annihilation." (Ironically, Kupelian has repeatedly displayed his blind loyalty to Trump.) WND even published a column defending the Obama-Nazi smear and declaring that those who complained about it "are out of ideas or have too much time on their hands."

Did Kupelian fret about inflaming violent attacks against Obama when he published all those attacks? Doubtful -- Kupelian has his own personal hatred of Obama that's so pathological that he actually accused Obama of perpetrating the "date rape of America." Near as we can tell, Kupelian would not have minded an assassination attempt or two on Obama; heck, he's so filled with hate that he might have easily been moved to perpetrate one.

Given all this selective outrage, will Kupelian reflect on his website's past extreme rhetoric and issue a heartfelt apology to Obama for inciting its readers to consider assassination? Even more doubtful -- has WND ever apologized for anything without being threatened with a lawsuit first?

(And we haven't even gotten to the fact that WND also loved to liken Obama to the Antichrist.)

WND has regularly freaked out about Trump-Hitler comparison, deliberately oblivious to the fact that it did the exact same thing to Obama. Kupelian is being as dishonest and hypocritical now as his website was then. And it hasn't stopped doing so even after the above rant. Kupelian complained in an August 2020 column:

Yet Biden’s blatant dishonesty is just part of a much larger pattern of Democrats continuously tying President Trump to Hitler, the single most detested genocidal monster in human history:

[...]

Such comparisons are far worse and far more serious than merely being insane.

Yes of course they’re insane. Adolf Hitler murdered 11 million people while Donald Trump has murdered none; ergo Trump is not Hitler.

But why “far worse and far more serious” than merely insane?

Consider that the only truly moral and courageous response to the real Adolf Hitler during the real Third Reich was to try to kill him. There were 16 known plots to assassinate Hitler, and all of the participants – who were eventually executed, including the beloved Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged by the Nazis for his role in the “20 July plot” – are today universally regarded as heroes and martyrs. Therefore, comparing Trump to Hitler constitutes an insidious invitation to any of the countless violent leftwing crazies out there to attempt to assassinate the president, just like the “Bernie Bro” who shot at multiple Republican congressmen at a 2017 charity baseball practice, almost killing and gravely wounding Rep. Steve Scalise.

[...]

But back to the question at hand: Why do top Democrats and their media allies continually liken Trump to Hitler, when the comparison is so obviously extreme, reckless, deranged, dangerous and frankly evil?

It’s not solely because they detest Trump and consider “Hitler,” “Gestapo,” “Nazi,” “stormtroopers” and “concentration camps” useful nasty words to hurl at him.

It is far more purposeful and strategic than that.

Casting Trump as Hitler, and his supporters as deplorable white-supremacist neo-Nazi types, comprises the entire moral core of the Democratic Party’s claim to be the rightful inheritors of permanent political power in America, starting in November.

Consider this: The left – as recent events make clearer than ever – detests law and order, individual rights, Judeo-Christian morality, anything and everything that limits, confines, exposes or restrains it. It is thus continually fighting and rebelling against the Constitution, the laws of economics, human nature, basic biology – everything that inhibits their imposition on society of their wildest and most unhinged utopian fantasies.

Consider also, if you will, that if you were truly fighting a genocidal monster like Hitler, almost nothing would be out of bounds for you. Essentially there would be no rules – and that’s exactly the way the left likes it. No rules.

Kupelian is projecting, of course -- he's accusing Democrats of treating Trump the way he and WND treated Barack Obama during his presidency. Kupelian closed his column by making the smear he had just spent the rest of his column denouncing by suggesting that Joe Biden is another Hitler: "After all, considering the Democrats’ shockingly fake candidate, their insane platform and their appalling totalitarian plans for America, Adolf Hitler is just about the only person in history who, by comparison, makes today's Democrats look halfway palatable."

Kupelian did much the same thing in a December 2020 column attacking (non-right-wing) journalists as "guardians of the swamp," declaring that Trump, "the sitting president of the United States, who rescued the nation’s economy and destroyed ISIS, has since early 2016 been repeatedly compared by major U.S. news organizations to genocidal monster Adolf Hitler." Kupelian again forgot that his "news" organization repeatedly compared President Obama to Hitler and other Nazis.

Kupelian stated in an August 2021 appearance on a right-wing TV show hosted by former WND columnist Gina Loudon:

“Back in 2016, Gina, I did an article on five different Washington Post writers who explicitly compared Donald Trump to Hitler in the run-up to the election. And you ask yourself, why would they do that? It’s because, if you and I, Gina, were alive in Hitler’s Germany, would we cheat on an election in order to save six million Jews, to slay this dragon and stop a terrible war? Of course we would’ve cheated on the election! This was the left’s subliminal but undeniable message to America: It’s not only that it’s OK to cheat – it’s immoral NOT to cheat, if you’re getting rid of Hitler, the worst person to ever live, which is what they were saying about Trump.”

You might remember Loudon as trying to make hay off her teenage daughter being in a relationship with a 57-year-old actor-- then later making sure WND deleted the column she wrote about it.

Kupelian pushed the argument again in a September 2021 column:

From the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, to the two fake impeachments, to false claims Trump praised “very fine” Nazis in Charlottesville, to claims he instituted a “Muslim travel ban,” to claims he “locks children in cages” and “makes women and children drink from toilets,” to the continual comparisons with Hitler, the media and tech monopolies, along with Democrats and the “deep state,” had been interfering with Trump’s re-election bid for more than four years.

One more thing: If a nation’s leader truly is another Hitler, as top Democrats and media personalities insisted continually, not only should that leader obviously be defeated, but there is an absolute moral imperative to cheat in order to defeat him.

Except they never really believed Trump was another Hitler. They were just lying – because they love power more than truth, more than honor, more than what’s right. More than anything.

By his own reasoning, if Kupelian believed that Obama was another Hitler -- as appears to be the case -- that meant not only that he believed Obama should be defeated but also that there is an absolute moral imperative to lie in order to defeat him. That explains WND's obsession with Obama's birth certificate. Portraying it as fraudulent was a lie and Kupelian likely knew it, but he and Joseph Farah also knew it could build a conspiracy theory around it that perpetuate itself throughout Obama's presidency and possibly beyond.

(Oh, and Trump very much did praise “very fine” Nazis in Charlottesville, no matter how much WND tries to deny it.)

Kupelian repeated the same point yet again in the essay for the November 2021 edition of WND's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine:

But most essential to the Democrats’ secret love affair with election fraud, Donald J. Trump – who accomplished more good for the nation and its people than any president in a generation, restoring America’s economy, getting control of its southern border, defending life in the womb, and courageously deterring aggression in an increasingly treacherous world – is the new Adolf Hitler in their eyes.

It matters not that Hitler murdered 11 million and Trump murdered zero. For four years, top Democrats and their media mouthpieces continually likened Trump to “Hitler,” his administration to “the Third Reich,” ICE officers to “Nazi guards,” border detainment facilities to “concentration camps,” and the National Guard soldiers to “stormtroopers” and “the Gestapo.”

Why? Because if one were truly fighting Hitler, then cheating, lying, deception and even stronger measures would not only be morally permissible, they would become a moral imperative.

Kupelian whined about this once more in the revised and expanded edition of his 2015 book "The Snapping of The American Mind," an excerpt of which was published by WND on March 27:

Notwithstanding the Democratic Party’s long history of concocting outrageous Hitler parallels with Republicans, the U.S. president eliciting the most extreme and widespread Hitler comparisons – by far – has been Donald J. Trump.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn echoed the Hitler comparison, telling CNN, “This president and this attorney general seem to be doing everything they possibly can to impose Gestapo activities in local communities.” CNN’s Don Lemon compared Trump to Hitler on-air, as did Democratic presidential candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke. The truth is, throughout Trump’s presidency, Democrats and media personalities continually likened the 45th U.S. president to Hitler, demonized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers as Nazi guards, and border detention facilities as “concentration camps.”

Since the only moral response to the real Hitler was to try to assassinate him (there were 16 known plots to end Hitler’s life), merely lying, deceiving and cheating in elections would seem to be not just morally acceptable – but a moral imperative, according to this worldview.

We don't recall Kupelian ever fretting about inciting violent attacks on Obama whenever he published these smears, which tells us he believed that the only moral response to Obama was to deceive and lie about him, as WND's eight years of birther lies suggests.

WND columnist Michael Brown got in on the act as well, spending a September 2020 column complaining that MSNBC commentator Donny Deutsch claimed there was "no difference" between Trump and what Hitler was doing in the 1930s, adding that "when you look at the tactics, that is where we are right now":

This is as outrageous as it is ignorant, and Deutsch needs to be called on the carpet for his ugly and inflammatory comments. As stated by the National Council of Young Israel, "To in any way liken President Trump to Adolf Hitler, who is arguably the most heinous anti-Semite in world history, is unequivocally repugnant, and trivializing the Holocaust to make a cheap political point on television is a tremendous insult to the victims and their progeny."

Brown then rushed to defend Trump, as befits someone who labored hard to persuade evengelicals to look past Trump's amorality and embrace how he supported right-wing agenda items:

Trump has been our president for the last four years. During this time he has not imprisoned his political opponents, not overruled the Supreme Court or Congress, not launched aggressive new wars in other parts of the world, and not shut down the dissenting press (although he has certainly sought to expose "fake news").

In stark contrast, within months of Hitler coming into power in 1933, the Dachau concentration camp was opened for political dissenters, Hitler announced some of his conquest and expansion plans, and the first boycott of Jewish businesses was implemented.

As for targeting the Jews, the Yad Vashem website explains, "In September 1935 the 'Nuremberg Laws' were passed, stripping the Jews of their citizenship and forbidding intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. Jews were banned from universities; Jewish actors were dismissed from theaters; Jewish authors' works were rejected by publishers; and Jewish journalists were hard-pressed to find newspapers that would publish their writings. Famous artists and scientists played an important role in this campaign of dispossession and party labeling of literature, art and science. Some scientists and physicians were involved in the theoretical underpinnings of the racial doctrine."

How do we even contrast that with Trump's pro-Israel actions, including moving our embassy to Jerusalem, seeking to broker a peace plan with the Palestinians that was strongly pro-Israel, and forging historic peace treaties with the UAE and Bahrain? And what of the fact that Ivanka and Jared are practicing Jews, meaning that some of Trump's own grandchildren are Jewish?

When it comes to the treatment of the Christian community, Trump has fought tirelessly to defend religious liberties, both at home and abroad. Again, in stark contrast, already in 1933, Nazi church leaders were calling for all pastors to make a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler while demanding that all baptized Jews be expelled from the churches.

In a December 2020 column, Brown felt a little uncomfortable with author Austin Cline stating that "German Christians supported the Nazis because they believed that Adolf Hitler was a gift to the German people from God," and his first instinct was to distance Trump from the comparison: "While Cline paints with too broad a brush, and while America is far from Nazi Germany and Trump is far from Hitler, the parallels remain striking and concerning." He added:

Again, Trump is not Hitler, and we who voted for him are neither Nazis nor supporters of Nazism. But to the extent that we think that true American-ness equals true Christianity, we make a serious mistake. And to the extent we wrap the cross in the American flag, we degrade the Gospel.

He concluded by declaring: "let us love our country and serve our country and pray for our country. But let us not confuse America with the kingdom of God. Many will be hurt if we make this mistake." A few weeks later came the Capitol riot, which finally caused Brown to have serious questions about Trump.

"There's a Nazi living in the White House"

You will not be surprised that Kupelian was proven to be a hypocrite on this issue yet again. His boss, Joseph Farah, has made the circle of hypocrisy complete by going Godwin on President Biden in an Aug. 3 column -- unambiguously headlined "There's a Nazi living in the White House" -- in which he praised Trump for is silly victimhood in baselessly likening his numerous indictments to living in Nazi Germany:

Donald Trump did it! His campaign finally compared the federal indictments he's facing to the lawlessness reminiscent of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

"The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes," Trump's 2024 campaign said in a statement.

But the news media turned it into what it was not. It was not a comparison to the Holocaust. What's happening in this country is scandalous. The very founding of America is under attack. Our elections are being threatened. One has been stolen. The rule of law today is a myth. Joe Biden and Merrick Garland have shredded the Constitution in their hopes of holding power, fixing another election and jailing a president.

But, wait, you can't describe ANYTHING "as reminiscent of Nazi Germany"? That's what Anti-Defamation League Director Jonathan Greenblatt said.

"Comparing this indictment to Nazi Germany in the 1930s is factually incorrect, completely inappropriate and flat out offensive. As we have said time and again, such comparisons have no place in politics and are shameful," he said.

Almost universally, the news media took the bait.

Well, if you compare Trump's indictment to the Holocaust, that would be true. But that was not the case. The campaign was comparing "the lawlessness of the persecutions of Trump and his supporters" to Nazi Germany. That would be absolutely true. It was a fine analogy.

Trump's team also claimed the charges were an attempt by the Biden administration to interfere with the next election.

After more whining about Trump's latest indictment, Farah concluded:

Trump – the GOP front-runner in the 2024 presidential race – has been indicted three times in just four months. He's also been charged with 40 felony counts involving allegations he took boxes of classified documents and materials from the White House and stored them inside his Mar-a-Lago estate. A lie from the pit of Hell!

Donald Trump's daughter and son-in-law are Jews. I'm sure he loves them both. And he loves Israel and did more for the Jewish state in his administration than any other president. He was not committing some blood libel against them. He was simply saying, there might be a Nazi living the in the White House.

We have not seen any statement from Kupelian expressing outrage at Farah for likening this president to a Nazi -- Farah pays his salary, after all, and he probably approves of it, presumably so he can justify WND's vicious attacks on Biden with the goal of removing him from office via any means necessary as not just "morally permissible" but "a moral imperative."

Bob Unruh continued to do this in an Aug. 10 article:

A new poll shows that a majority of Iowa Republicans, based on the Biden administration's multiple legal attacks on President Donald Trump, believe Biden is turning America into a version of "Nazi Germany."

The polling was done by the Daily Mail.

It shows that majority thinks Biden's "pursuit of former President Donald Trump by the FBI. and the Department of Justice smacks of Nazi rule in 1930s Germany."

The report said 57% of respondents agreed with the statement: "The lawlessness of the persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Trump has described the multiple cases against him as a witch hunt and a political scheme to try to foil his bid for the presidency in 2024. He calls it election interference.

Of course, if America is becoming Nazi Germany, that means Biden is Hitler, even if Unruh won't explicitly say it.

Unruh didn't mention that the Daily Mail is a right-wing newspaper, and a British one at that. Rather than try to defend the poll or WND's hypocrisy, he tried to run defense for Trump by spouting right-wing narratives:

The government has brought a carload of charges against him for having documents from his presidency in his home. The DOJ and FBI, however, have ignored the fact that both Mike Pence and Joe Biden had similar documents in their homes, and no prosecutions have begun.

Further, Trump's been charged with business records violations that normally would have been misdemeanors. The prosecutors claim they now are felonies because they were used in furtherance of other, as yet unidentified, crimes.

And he's been charged over his statements regarding the 2020 election and the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a case which, critics say, is left void because of the protections affirmed by the First Amendment.

Surprisingly for WND, Unruh did insert a rare dissenting view:

Anti-Defamation League chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt objected to the comparison.

"Comparing this indictment to Nazi Germany in the 1930s is factually incorrect, completely inappropriate and flat out offensive. As we have said time and again, such comparisons have no place in politics and are shameful," he said.

Weird that Unruh doesn't similarly object, given how his employer objected to Trump-Hitler comparisons. nevertheless, Unruh's point was driven home with an image showing soldiers marching under Nazi banners.

Kupelian's and Farah's cynical double standard doesn't exactly build confidence that WND deserves to live.