When Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton referred to supporters of US presidential candidate Donald Trump as “a basket of deplorables” in 2016, it caused major controversy. The former Secretary of State had added -“some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America”. The media had carried out a vast coverage of the comment back then in comparison to the recent contentious remark made by the former president. During a campaign in New Hampshire, the 2024 presidential hopeful told supporters he would “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like ‘vermin’ within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections”. As per The Guardian , the “Big Three” broadcast networks (NBC, ABC, and CBS) covered Clinton’s comment more than Trump’s in the first week following its utterance, according to findings released by the progressive organization Media Matters.
Matt Gertz, a Media Matters senior member stated about the findings: “Coverage decisions like these … shape the political landscape during presidential election cycles.” As reported by The Guardian , President Joe Biden was quick to condemn Trump over his ‘vermin’ remark, the Democratic leader claimed that Trump’s statements were similar to those made in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. “In just the last few days, Trump has said if he returns to office he’s gonna go after all those who oppose him and wipe out what he called the ‘vermin … in America’… it echoes language you heard in Nazi Germany in the 30s. It isn’t even the first time,” Biden stated during a fundraiser in San Francisco.
“Trump also recently talked about, ‘The blood of America is being poisoned’ … Again, echoes the same phrases used in Nazi Germany,” Biden added. Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesman, vehemently rejected the comparisons to Nazis, Hitler and Italy’s Mussolini. “Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House,” Cheung said.
One word can sum up a Trump second-term: vengeance. He’d weaponize the DOJ to victimize his enemies. He’s vowed to investigate the media for “treason.” He wants “root out” leftists from our country, calling them “vermin.” If you’re not horrified, you’re not paying attention
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 25, 2023
Gertz continued about the recent media findings: “The former president … added that those forces want ‘to destroy America and to destroy the American dream’ and that ‘the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within’.” “By contrast, the right weaponized Clinton’s relatively mundane ‘basket of deplorables’ comment … [though] she went on to stress that attendees shouldn’t write off all of his backers because they also include ‘people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change’, adding: ‘Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.’”
“By contrast, the same outlets largely ignored Trump’s description of his political enemies as ‘vermin’, continuing a pattern of relatively muted coverage of Trump’s abhorrent and incoherent commentary,” he additionally stated while concluding.