Donald Trump’s allies have been told to stop saying the quiet part out loud.
Rolling Stone reports that MAGA associates have been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to house people rounded up in a massive deportation operation.
“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told the outlet. “Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”
Advisers have cautioned surrogates and allies to keep the charged term out of their remarks, Rolling Stone claims, to avoid “the concentration camps framing” that dogged Trump’s campaign. Coupled with Trump’s heated rhetoric comparing undocumented immigrants to “animals” and saying they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors didn’t need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.
Former House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn took it a step further on Saturday morning, agreeing that Trump was “another Hitler” in an interview with Fox News.
The “camps” language is one Trump’s team had embraced during the election cycle. Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together.
Trump’s prospective “border czar,” Tom Homan, shied away from the camp talk late last month in an interview with “60 Minutes.”
“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”
As the second Trump term approaches, however, Homan’s become a little more forthright about his deportation plans. He likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said in an interview with Donald Trump Jr. earlier this week. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”
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