Many left-wing activists infamously claimed during the 2016 presidential race that Donald Trump was “Hitlerian,” a statement exposing the accusers either of being ignorant of history or deliberately manipulative of facts.
While they failed to prevent Trump’s election, they’re back with the same tactic now that he’s in office pursuing his agenda of Obamacare repeal, lower taxes and less government.
This time, they’re grabbing just one part of the Hitler analogy, claiming Trump will be responsible for tens of thousands of deaths by revising or eliminating certain parts of the Obamacare law.
“Repealing the Affordable Care Act will kill more than 43,000 people annually,” fantastically claimed a headline in the Washington Post.
Writers David Himmelstein and Steffie Woodhandler, both activist professors in the public-health department at a New York school, said the “impact of Republicans’ war on Obamacare is likely to be worse than anyone expects.”
“We’re convinced that an ACA repeal could cause tens of thousands of deaths annually,” they wrote.
“The biggest and most definitive study of what happens to death rates when Medicaid coverage is expanded, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that for every 455 people who gained coverage across several states, one life was saved per year. Applying that figure to even a conservative estimate of 20 million losing coverage in the event of an ACA repeal yields an estimate of 43,956 deaths annually.”
While the study did find that Medicaid expansions to cover low-income adults were associated with reduced mortality, the conclusion didn’t address what might happen in the reverse. Nor did the study conclusion address the fact that many of those expected to drop out of health coverage would do so by choice.
The critics’ conclusion was drawn from the inverse of the results of the study, which also noted the mortality changes were greatest “among older adults, nonwhites, and residents of poorer counties.” They didn’t mention that seniors and the poor still will have Medicaid or Medicare or that the results came only from three states: New York, Maine and Arizona.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez charged President Trump and Republicans “will own every preventable death.”
“Trump and Republicans will own every preventable death, every untreated illness and every bankruptcy that American families will be forced to bear if this bill becomes law and millions lose access to affordable care. The 24 million that lose access to healthcare is not just a number,” he said.
Last Thursday, the House voted 217-213 to approve a repeal and replacement plan for Obamacare that now moves to the Senate.
Fox News reported the vicious comment from Kurt Eichenwald, senior Newsweek writer, on Republicans who voted for the replacement: “I hope every GOPr who voted 4 Trumpcare sees a family member get long term condition, lose insurance & die.”
The Washington Times said:Â “For sheer shock value, however, it may be hard to top the Democrats. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts predicted on Twitter that ‘people will die,’ and Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont accused Republicans of celebrating a vote to ‘let thousands of Americans die so that billionaires get tax breaks.'”
ThinkProgress wrote: “Approximately 17,000 people could die in 2018 who otherwise would have lived if a House Republican health proposal endorsed by the Trump administration becomes law. By 2026, the number of people killed by Trumpcare could grow to approximately 29,000 in that year alone.”
The activists at ActionNetwork stated: “Join us as we hold a vigil to mourn the deaths of the Iowans and Americans that will die if Trumpcare is passed. Almost 200 Iowans are projected to die each year, 2,000 total over the next decade. … The U.S. House of Representatives votes on Trumpcare this Thursday. If passed, 14 million people will lose health insurance next year and 24 million by 2026. Based on studies done in Massachusetts 17,000 of the 14 million who lose insurance will die next year (and each year thereafter) rising to 27,000 people a year by 2026. That is more people then are murdered in the United States each year.”
Talk-radio icon Rush Limbaugh noted how far the left has been pushing the comments.
“New York liberals say, it’s not enough to just say that Obamacare repeal will kill people. ‘We must be far more visceral,’ said Jason Haber, a Manhattan real estate investor who started a super PAC that he said will host mock funerals – including ‘tombstones, coffins, even eulogies’ – later this month for ‘the constituents that will be killed as a result of losing access to health care.’ Haber, who has worked in New York Democratic politics, said, ‘In the age of Trump, nothing short of blunt and brute force will work as a counterweight,’ adding, ‘We can’t win based on the merit of our ideas.'”
Limbaugh explained what the leftist meant.
“So what he’s saying is (translated), ‘Our insanity is not enough. We’re gonna have to demonstrate our insanity! We’re gonna have to illustrate how nutso we are. We’re gonna do mock funerals with coffins, eulogies, tombstones for people who will die because of what’s happening to Obamacare.'”
Limbaugh also noted leftists who have chimed in, such as Cory Booker (“This will cost American lives if it ever becomes law!”), Sheila Jackson Lee (“the Trumpcare’s Mother of All Bombs of health care dropped on the American people!”), Nancy Pelosi (“This is deadly. This is deadly.”), Terry McAuliffe (“People are going to die if this bill that got passed … ever became law.”), Bernie Sanders (“Thousands of people would die.”), and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (“There’s no question that people will not only lose their health care, but many will lose their lives.”).
Some commentators said the Democrats’ charge that the GOP is trying to kill Americans is worse than calling Trump Hitler.
See a Fox interview with Guy Benson, political editor for Townhall.com:
[jwplayer yLkDQhRq]
A Fox News host noted a friend posted on Facebook that the “sickest, oldest and poorest suffer today with this vote … which is a patent lie, the oldest still have Medicare, sickest and poorest still have Medicaid.”
Guy Benson, political editor for Townhall.com, pointed out in a Fox News interview: “Studies show the death rate post-Obamacare has gone up. If I were a hack I would say Obamacare is killing people, but I’m not a hack. There are other factors at play.”
But he said the Democrats’ message that “this is a bill that’s going to kill” is “overreach[ing] massively.”
He recalled the early pro-Obamacare arguments that turned out to be “lie after lie.”
One of the best known false promises, named by Politifact as “Lie of the Year”: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
Politifact said: “We counted dozens of times that President Barack Obama said that if people liked their health plans, they could keep them. It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America’s health insurance system.”
However, policy cancellation letters were sent out to about 4 million Americans as soon as Obamacare came into existence.
Politifact said readers in a separate online poll “overwhelmingly agreed” with it’s “Lie of the Year” choice, which in four of the past five years was related to Obamacare.
“They’re doing the same thing in the other direction now,” Benson said.
Television personality Jerry Springer, according to USA Today, has been listening to “outrageous” comments on his “sleazy” show for years, and “now he’s making one of his own.”
Springer, in an ad run in the Cincinnati Enquirer, likened the repeal of Obamacare “to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”
“Today’s date will likely not be remembered as much as 9/11 … and yet, what Congress did today will end up killing many more Americans than Osama bin Laden ever did,” Springer gushed.
He continued, “With millions & millions of people facing now the reality of being dropped from insurance plans (unless the Senate defeats this), does anyone seriously believe that only 3,000 of them will die because they couldn’t afford a doctor, or a treatment, or medicine or a hospital?”
He called the decision in Congress an “act of war.”
Limbaugh added: “The Democrats are demonstrating they are so out of touch with mainstream decency in this country. It really boils down to that. They’re just absent traditional, mainstream decency. Their late-night comics, their daily Drive-By Media, prime-time entertainment. They’re just absent decency – and I’m telling you, the great silent majority or what have you, most Americans are just offended and livid over this filth that has become standardized. Hell, even at Democrat rallies now cursing is required. This Perez guy that’s running the Democrat National Committee? They’re all out there at rallies and they’re purposely cursing because that’s what their base wants! Their base is so livid, so enraged, so unhinged.”
WND reported examples of the left’s “Hitler” charge against Trump.
They called his inaugural address “Hitlerian,” and WND Managing Editor David Kupelian documented that multiple Washington Post writers had adopted the description and had been using it for weeks.
MSNBC personality Rachel Maddow likened Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan to something from the 1930s America, when, she said, there was “an America First Committee” that tried to keep the nation out of World War II and was “infiltrated by the Nazis … which is part of why they weren’t alarmed by Hitler’s rise in Germany.”
Hitler is responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews and other people during World War II.
Maddow complained that the America First Committee “is something that means a specific thing in this country.”
“To repurpose it now, not that far down the historical path, it’s hard. It’s hard to hear,” she said.
WND’s David Kupelian noted at least five writers from the Washington Post already have evoked Hitler.
He wrote:
It started last February when Post columnist Danielle Allen threw down the gauntlet with a widely cited article dramatically headlined “The moment of truth: We must stop Trump.”
Naturally, she went directly to the Hitler comparison.
“Like any number of us raised in the late 20th century,” Allen wrote. “I have spent my life perplexed about exactly how Hitler could have come to power in Germany. Watching Donald Trump’s rise, I now understand. Leave aside whether a direct comparison of Trump to Hitler is accurate. That is not my point. My point rather is about how a demagogic opportunist can exploit a divided country.”
Then followed a June 14 headline, “Donald Trump’s new favorite slogan was invented for Nazi sympathizers.”
The writer snarked: “He wasn’t quite promising ‘America über alles,’ but it comes close. ‘America First’ was the motto of Nazi-friendly Americans in the 1930s, and Trump has more than just a catchphrase in common with them.”
A few weeks later, the Post published a piece by Peter Ross Range, a longtime mainstream newsmagazine writer, titled “The theory of political leadership that Donald Trump shares with Adolf Hitler.”
The report continued: “Then there was author and essayist Shalom Auslander, whose Sept. 13 Washington Post column was headlined: “Don’t compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. It belittles Hitler.” His subtitle: “One was a psychopath who believed his raving rants. The other is a con man.”
And a week later, on Sept. 19, the Post published a controversial article by Richard Cohen, a weekly political columnist who has been with the paper since 1968. It bore the chilling headline “Trump’s Hitlerian disregard for the truth.”
The Washington Examiner reported after Christmas that it had found several additional references to Trump as Hitler, including in a New York Times book review by Michiko Kakutani and a comment by CNN’s Dana Bash after a presidential-campaign debate.
