None of Mississippi’s top elected Republican officials is commenting on former President Donald Trump’s May 20 social-media post that mentioned “the creation of a unified Reich” amid a list of hypothetical headlines if he wins November’s presidential election.
The Mississippi Free Press asked for comment from Gov. Tate Reeves, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, Attorney General Lynn Fitch, Secretary of State Michael Watson, Treasurer David McRae, Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson, State Auditor Shad White, Mississippi House Speaker Jason White, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, U.S. House Rep. Mike Ezell, U.S. House Rep. Trent Kelly and U.S. House Rep. Michael Guest—all Republicans. Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi’s only Democrat in Congress, also did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson said the commissioner had not seen the video so he could not provide comment—a common refrain from Republicans across the country when asked about Trump’s inflammatory statements since he first became the GOP nominee for president in 2016.
Among the Republicans the Mississippi Free Press contacted, all except White and Watson, who has remained neutral as the state’s elections chief, have endorsed Trump.
A now-deleted video that the ex-president posted on his social-media site Truth Social displayed what newspaper headlines could look like if the Republican won a second term. Alongside the “unified Reich” comment, messages like “Trump wins!!” and “Economy booms” appeared on the screen as well as references to World War I.
“German industrial strength and production had significantly increased after 1871, driven by the creation of a unified Reich,” read one of the headlines, which is similar to a passage in the Wikipedia entry on World War I. Smaller states united to create the German Reich, or nation.
The word “Reich” means a kingdom or empire, and the term is most commonly associated with the “Third Reich,” which was when the Nazis were in power from 1943 to 1945 in Germany. In the Trump video, the “unified reich” headline appeared under the words, “What’s Next For America.”
Either Trump or a member of his campaign staff shared the video on his Truth Social account during his lunch break from the New York City hush-money trial on Monday afternoon, but it was deleted by Tuesday morning, the Associated Press reported.
His campaign press secretary said a staffer reposted the video, which was not intended to be a campaign video for the former president.
“This was not a campaign video, it was created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word, while the President was in court,” Karoline Leavitt, the campaign press secretary, said in a statement.
On Nov. 1, 2023, Reeves posted a video of Trump on social media where the ex-president endorsed Reeves for governor and called his Democratic opponent Brandon Presley “Joe Biden’s candidate.”
“The people attacking me are also attacking him,” Trump said of Reeves in the video.
Hosemann told reporters before the legislative session ended that Medicaid expansion was unlikely to go into effect with a work requirement unless Trump wins the election. The Medicaid expansion bill died on deadline on May 2.
Trump has used Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric to promote his own policies, including telling staff members that “Hitler did some good things” like rebuilding the economy, his former chief of staff told CNN. The ex-president has also called his political opponents “vermin” and said that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”—echoing rhetoric Hitler frequently used.
“It’s true. They’re destroying the blood of the country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country, and we’re going to have to get them out,” he said at a campaign event in Iowa in December 2023.
Trump also previously mentioned in 1990 that he owned a copy of Hitler’s book, “Mein Kampf,” but later claimed he had never read the book.
The ex-president is currently facing 88 felony criminal indictments across four jurisdictions, including state charges in New York and Georgia and federal charges in Florida and Washington, D.C. He is currently on trial in New York over hush-money payments made during the 2016 election while a federal trial in the nation’s capital over his plot to overthrow the 2020 election awaits a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on his claims of presidential immunity from prosecution.
