A Scary Rhyme Across Time

Jamie Stiehm
Tue, 17 Mar 2026 15:38:35 -0700
Opinion

I'd give anything not to write it this column. But the comparisons are clear when history rhymes.

President Donald Trump's America is a foghorn call across time — to Germany in the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler rose to power legally. Note, I do not mean the 1940s, when the Holocaust became the greatest crime in human history.

Hitler built grandiose architecture in Berlin to mark his chapter in history, the Third Reich. He had his own architect, Albert Speer, to follow his ideas.
Updated: Wed Mar 18, 2026

I'd give anything not to write it this column. But the comparisons are clear when history rhymes.

President Donald Trump's America is a foghorn call across time — to Germany in the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler rose to power legally. Note, I do not mean the 1940s, when the Holocaust became the greatest crime in human history.

Hitler built grandiose architecture in Berlin to mark his chapter in history, the Third Reich. He had his own architect, Albert Speer, to follow his ideas.

Trump has his own master ideas for buildings in the nation's capital and acts upon them without much ado.

The beloved John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will be closed in July for two years, he says, for "renovations." Nobody knows its true destiny. The other night, I heard the National Symphony Orchestra play Brahms' stirring Symphony No. 3. Leaving was bittersweet, not knowing when it may be played again in the hall.

Trump seriously wants to build a huge arch similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The place he proposes for it is by the bridge between two sacred sites: the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

Then there's the demolished East Wing of the White House. He'd like a big beautiful ballroom to dwarf the original president's residence. The elegant symmetry of the design would be gone with the winter wind.

I got to thinking about Nazi Germany rallies, where Hitler gave shrieking speeches with manic energy to his legions of followers. How different were these mass spells from Trump's charged MAGA rallies, which can wind around the block and clock two or three hours?

Grievances were their political stock in trade. Hitler played to an audience of a country defeated in the Great War — World War I. Trump managed to defeat two women by acting like white people — like you — are losing their birthright entitlements.

What about mass political marches and violence like those the Nazis staged? Sure thing, Trump has no problem with that. The white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 was a warmup for an astonishing attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with Congress captive. Thousands responded to his summons to storm the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election.

In the House chamber that day, I'll never forget the sounds of the mob trying to beat the doors down. Just as haunting was the sound of glass breaking on the marble tile floors. Our version of Kristallnacht, the night Nazis destroyed Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues by smashing glass all over city streets.

That was a terrifying and shattering night for witnesses in Germany. Jan. 6 took the oxygen out of American democracy, and we haven't been the same since.

Trump's true genius is for choosing the worst possible people to surround him, a trait he and the Fuhrer share. Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and (ousted) Kristi Noem are a fair match for Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann.

Russell Vought is a heartless bureaucrat who carried out Trump's wish to weaken the American government from within. Dan Caine, Trump's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knew a war on Iran would run straight into the Strait of Hormuz. He was too afraid to tell Trump the truth — or Trump can't handle the truth?

You tell me.

Our "mass deportations" are just another way of saying we round up people without warrants, separate civilians from their families and detain them in dark places.

Now the final piece. Hitler conquered one country after another and seized the German-speaking Sudetenland. Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and France fell in short succession. Power-drunk, he made a major mistake when he attacked his ally, the Soviet Union.

I couldn't help but think of Trump and Venezuela, Iran, Cuba and, in his dreams, Greenland.

The president's fatal flaw may be similar in the end: Trump trash-talked and turned on too many Western allies and friends.

Trump's Washington, like wartime Prague, knows an uncounted casualty of war. As a historian of the Czech Republic, Norman Eisen, wrote, "Its whimsy (was) lost, its eccentric spirit broken."

That's a little price to pay, day by day.