A failed former Republican political consultant is under fire following a series of incendiary blog posts in which he falsely compared President Donald Trump’s electoral victories to those of Adolf Hitler.
For years, Steve Schmidt has compared his former political party to the Nazis — but his latest series of posts following his most recent visit to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in Germany raised some eyebrows on and off the Hill.
“Eighty-seven years ago [], Germany started World War II when it attacked Poland under false pretenses,” Schmidt wrote in the introduction to his latest podcast video. “I explain how the descent into fascism happens one day at a time and warn that under Donald Trump, America is walking a dangerous path that must be stopped.”
Part of Schmidt’s latest criticisms of Trump and of Vice President JD Vance step from the Trump administration’s crackdowns on illegal immigration. In one instance, Schmidt compared a company that detains illegal immigrants to Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) units.
“I do know these are the members of the board of directors of CoreCivic, which runs Dilley, and who profit like the SS once did from the system of brutality they engineered to exploit suffering,” Schmidt said in his latest video — in which he also called Vance “an American fascist.”
“A psychiatrist would call this projection because, in fact, what JD Vance is accusing his enemies of doing is precisely what he has done over and over again in the style of a good Hitler man from back in the day,” Schmidt insisted.
Days before the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s murder, Schmidt also dragged the Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder’s name through the mud, along with that of Stephen Miller.
“These words, spoken by Stephen Miller, a true Nazi at the fascist rally dressed up as a memorial service for the assassinated white nationalist Charlie Kirk, could have easily rolled off of Joseph Goebbels’ tongue,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt’s Nazi fixation is nothing new. Days after Trump was nearly assassinated in 2024, Schmidt took to his blog to call the Republican National Convention (RNC) a “Bund gathering,” referencing the WWII-era German-American Nazi organization. Schmidt co-founded the Lincoln Project, an organization rife with pedophilia accusations.
“The fact that the Lincoln Project grifters are now saying immigration enforcement means Nazism shows where the Democratic Party is headed,” a GOP strategist told the Reporter following Scmidt’s salvo. “It’s preposterous, it will likely lead to someone attacking an ICE officer, and the left should be held politically accountable for this insane rhetoric.”
Unsurprisingly, Schmidt’s rhetoric was met with instant condemnation from Republican lawmakers like Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), who told the Washington Reporter that the policies that Schmidt attacks regularly make Cotton’s constituents safer.
“Every Arkansan is safer with a secure border and fewer illegal alien criminals on our streets,” Cotton told the Reporter. “The American men and women at ICE risk their lives to protect all of us from dangerous criminals — comparing immigration enforcement to Nazi Germany is both outrageous and absurd.”
Cotton, who is heavily favored to defeat his Democratic opponent, Hallie Shoffner, in November, added that “Democrats are trying to justify returning to Biden-Harris open border policies, but no one is buying it.”
