Hillary Clinton compares Ohio Trump supporters to Germans "drawn in by Hitler"

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared President Donald J. Trump’s recent campaign speech in Ohio to a Nazi rally from the decades old days of the German Third Reich.

“I remember as a young student, you know, trying to figure out, how people get basically drawn in by Hitler. How did that happen?" she said during the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas on Friday. “I’d watch newsreels and I’d see this guy standing up there ranting and raving, and people shouting and raising their arms. I thought, ‘What’s happened to these people?

“You saw the rally in Ohio the other night, Trump is there ranting and raving for more than an hour, and you have these rows of young men with their arms raised. I thought, ‘What is going on?'”

The former U.S. Senator for the state of New York was alluding to a Sept. 17 rally in Youngstown, Ohio, where Trump was stumping for GOP Senate candidate J.D. Vance. 

Photographs and video taken at the rally have depicted several supporters raising their arms in the air with their index finger pointing upward, a move that some interpreted as a salute to the Qanon conspiracy movement. Others simply speculated the reaction was just Trump supporters making clear they believe the former president is “No. 1” in their book. 

“My fellow citizens, this incredible journey we’re on together has only just begun, and it is time to start talking about greatness for our country again. We are one movement, one people, one family, and one glorious American nation,” Trump heralded.

As Mr. Trump spoke, scores of people in the crowd raised fingers in the air in an apparent reference to the “1” in what they thought was the song’s title. It was the first time in the memory of some Trump aides that such a display had occurred at one of his rallies.

Several publications have suggested that the crowd’s hand motions, and the music played at the Ohio event were emblematic of Trump embracing the conspiracy movement.

“Earlier this week, close advisers to former president Donald Trump grappled with a question: what to do about the QAnon song. The melody — an orchestral theme featuring swelling strings, gentle bell tones and brooding piano harmonies — was the soundtrack to a campaign-style video Trump released in August.

But it wasn’t until last Saturday’s rally in Youngstown, Ohio, when the tune closed Trump’s nearly two-hour speech, inspiring the crowd to respond with raised arms and pointed index fingers, that it broke through as a phenomenon,” penned two writers for the Washington Post.

“While speaking in Youngstown in support of J.D. Vance, whom he has endorsed as Ohio’s Republican nominee for the Senate, Mr. Trump delivered a dark address about the decline of America over music that was all but identical to a song called “Wwg1wga” — an abbreviation for the QAnon slogan, “Where we go one, we go all,” wrote Alen Feuer and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times.

The Times then pointed out however that, “Aides to Mr. Trump said the song played at the rally was called “Mirrors,” and it was selected for use in a video that Mr. Trump played at the conservative meeting CPAC and posted on his social media site, Truth Social. But it sounds strikingly like the QAnon theme song.

The Atlantic took a harsher tone.

“For some time, the former president has been flirting with the cult—which believes, among other preposterous things, that Democrats are part of a global child-sex-trafficking ring that Trump will ultimately defeat. But lately, that courtship has turned into a consummated marriage, as Trump incorporated QAnon tropes into an Ohio rally and started spreading them on his social-media service,” wrote former Obama DHS appointee Juliette Kayemm for The Atlantic magazine.

A Trump spokesperson called the theory that the sign was in reference to Qanon  a “dopey conspiracy.”

“As usual, the media is working hand in hand with the Democrats weeks before an election,” said spokesman Taylor Budowich. “It seems like perpetual-failed-candidate Hillary Clinton’s basket of deplorables has run stale, not unlike herself,”  Budowich said. “It’s pathetic, it’s divisive, and it is further cementing her legacy of cringe.”