Is Trump’s “Vermin” Comment Finally Enough?

On Sunday we visited the American military cemetery in Luxembourg where American Ambassador Tom Barrett (the former Mayor of Milwaukee) laid a wreath in a ceremony where the people of Luxembourg acknowledge the sacrifice of American soldiers who freed them from the Nazis. Over 5,000 GI’s are here, most killed in the Battle of the Bulge. About 7,000 more were sent home to lie in their hometown cemeteries.

I’m long past the point of thinking that anything Donald Trump says or does will cost him a single vote among his base.

But Trump can’t win with his base alone. He needs at least some critical mass of moderates and of Republicans who are repulsed by him but who find the prospect of voting for a Democrat even more distasteful.

So when, last week, Trump said something that was alarming even by his standards it led me to think that he actually finally did himself some real damage.

At a campaign event in New Hampshire on Veterans Day, Trump vowed to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” He then said his political opposition was the most pressing and pernicious threat facing America. “The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within,” Trump said. “Our threat is from within.”

He made those comments on Veterans Day. It was a slap in the face to all those who gave their lives during WW II to stop a man who was saying — and acting upon — notions just like that. It was just beyond disgusting.

And to make matters worse, his campaign doubled down. “Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said, “and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

I’m quite sure that these statements emboldened the group of Nazis who marched through Madison this past weekend.

Is this finally enough? Has Trump at last gone too far? Not for his base, of course, but for anybody with a conscious and a soul? I don’t care who the Democrats put up, how can anybody in good-conscious vote for this man?

I’m traveling in Europe this week, a place where you cannot escape evidence of Nazi atrocities. Even the U.S. Embassy in Luxembourg served as Nazi headquarters during the war. Sunday we were at the cemetery and later this week we’ll visit the concentration camp at Mauthausen. Trump’s language so closely echoes that of Hitler that it could not be a coincidence or a mistake and his campaign’s official reaction only confirms that.

I’ve long referred to Trump as a quasi-fascist. That was being too kind. This man must be defeated.