The Death of the 'Trump is Literally Hitler' Narrative

The Big Lie of 2024 that “Trump is Literally Hitler” ultimately failed to convince anyone. But the fact that the Propaganda Media dared to tell it is a serious warning to America.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, a coordinated media effort sought to smear Donald Trump as a modern-day Hitler. It was a transparent and calculated "Big Lie" designed to distract from Kamala Harris’s dismal poll numbers.

This propaganda campaign was neither subtle nor convincing, yet its methods and the media’s complicity in amplifying it are worth examining as a lesson in how dishonest narratives are manufactured and spread.

Image credit: @RobertMSterling/ X

While The Atlantic never published an article called “Trump is Literally Hitler,” this is the narrative that was being perpetuated, thus we will put related stories under this umbrella. This was the psychological association that the media campaign intended to reinforce in the minds of voters ahead of the 2024 election.

The campaign began with articles in The New York Times and The Atlantic, two outlets with enough institutional credibility to provide the initial veneer of legitimacy for the spurious ‘Trump is pro-Hitler’ claims. These once-trusted publications lacked the reach to saturate the public consciousness on their own but functioned as the ignition point for a spreading the media wildfire.

Within hours of being published, their assertions were picked up and regurgitated by nearly every major media outlet, from CNN and MSNBC to Business Insider and the New Yorker. Dozens of related articles flooded the news cycle, each parroting the same outlandish comparisons between Trump and Hitler.

The media blitzkrieg got so ridiculous that Donald Trump’s event at Madison Square Garden was compared to a Nazi rally. The author of this hoax? None other than the Russia hoax mastermind herself, Hillary Clinton.

"One other thing that you'll see next week, Kaitlan, is Trump actually reenacting the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939. I write about this in my book," Clinton told CNN's Kaitlan Collins. "President Franklin Roosevelt was appalled that neo-Nazis, fascists in America were lining up to essentially pledge their support for the kind of government that they were seeing in Germany. So I don't think we can ignore it."

"Now, it may be a leap for some people and a lot of others may think, 'I don't want to go there. I don't want to say that.' But please open your eyes to the danger that this man poses to our country, because I think it is clear and present for anybody paying attention," Clinton continued.

This cascade of mindless coverage was not the product of independent journalism or robust verification. Instead, it was a coordinated effort to repeat the same baseless narrative across multiple platforms to create the illusion of widespread consensus.

The repetition was key: most people don’t read beyond the headlines, and the barrage of identical claims from a variety of outlets was intended to overwhelm skepticism. This strategy exploits the psychological tendency to assume that a widely repeated narrative must have merit, even when it lacks substance.

The timing of the smear campaign was telling. Harris’s allies were clearly panicking about her inability to connect with voters and sought to refocus the public’s attention on Trump by invoking fear. Casting him as a dictator or fascist was not new—it had been a recurring theme among his detractors for years—but the specific invocation of Hitler was an escalation, designed to shock and distract.

This effort was laughable on its face, yet the media’s willingness to participate revealed the state of modern journalism. Rather than critically evaluate the claims or question their basis, outlets fell in line, prioritizing clicks and engagement over truth. The narrative wasn’t just repeated; it was embellished, creating the impression that dozens of independent investigations had arrived at the same conclusion. This was, of course, entirely false.

The absurdity of the “Trump is Literally Hitler” narrative becomes even more glaring in the wake of Donald Trump’s recent visit to Europe.

First, there was Trump’s epic handshake with French President Emmanuel Macron.

French President Macron gave a thumbs up as Trump put him in a dominant handshake vice. Very odd thing for a French globalist to do with a “fascist.”

This was far from an isolated incident. Trump was likewise treated in a friendly fashion in a meeting with Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

This is not how one would expect “literally, Hitler” to be greeted by European leaders.

European leaders were very cordial in greeting President-Election Donald Trump.

There’s more. Italian President Giorgia Meloni, whose homeland literally invented fascism, apparently didn’t recognize a “fascist” right in front of her face. Weird, right?

Then the final blow to the Big Lie: Joe Biden’s own wife, First Lady Jill Biden, chumming it up with Donald Trump as he turned on the charm.

Far from being treated as a pariah or authoritarian, Trump was greeted enthusiastically in Europe. This reception underscored the disconnect between the American media’s portrayal of Trump and his actual standing on the global stage.

It also exposes the limits of the establishment media’s psyops: while its Big Lie could dominate the domestic headlines, it could not rewrite reality.

The Big Lie of 2024 that “Trump is Literally Hitler” ultimately failed to convince anyone paying attention.

But the fact that the establishment media was complicit in pushing this obvious psyop stands as a serious warning that these propaganda outlets are not to be trusted at all.