Robert Blaha, Donald Trump's campaign co-chair in Colorado, went on KLZ 560 AM Friday to compare media reporting on accusations of sexual assault against his candidate to Nazi propaganda.
The question posed by host Steve Curtis: "What do we do about the press that is so obviously biased and is using the airwaves that belong really to the people of the United States?"
Curtis alleges that news networks have violated campaign finance laws "time and time and time again" by being "in the tank" for Hillary Clinton.
There is some definite irony here considering that Trump was dubbed the "King of Earned Media" during the primary, spending almost nothing while getting his name in front of voters over and over again through coverage of his controversial remarks and his presence on cable call-in shows. One estimate put the value of his earned media at $2 billion. And that was all the way back in March.
Here's what Blaha had to say about the recent coverage of allegations of sex assault:
"One of the greatest rights that we have is our First Amendment rights to free speech here in this country. The problem is that we have a media that not only has manipulated that and moved that in a different direction, they do it on a daily basis.
You don't have to go any further back than a study of what happened in Germany with Joseph Goebbels and what took place there and the constant barrage of propaganda, of manipulation, etc. Back in the day at least they called it correctly. I think his correct post was called -- in WW II -- was Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. And that's what we see. We see a lot of propaganda, we see a lot of total manipulation, we see a lot of half-truths, manipulation, innuendo, third-party, 30-year-old stories, that they turn into a daily -- this is important -- a daily barrage of half-truths and lies."
Blaha then goes on to say that lies repeated over and over come to seem true.
Just as a refresher, the timeline of events related to the accusations is that the Washington Post reported on audio from a 2005 Access Hollywood appearance in which Trump brags about being able to grope women because he's a "star," then Anderson Cooper put Trump on the record saying that no, he had never done that, only talked about it, during the second presidential debate. That comment prompted several women to come forward with stories that he had, in fact, done exactly what he said he did.
Their stories are very similar to stories that circulated before the audio became public. These women have put their names to their stories. They are not "third-party" stories. Some are 30 years old. Some are much more recent.
And here's a summary of what Goebbels was up to in World War II:
Once installed, Goebbels began creating the Führer myth around Hitler, punctuating it with huge rallies geared toward converting the German people to Nazism. His day-to-day activities also included designing posters, publishing propaganda pieces, using his bodyguards to incite street battles and generally increasing political agitation.
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In 1932, at Hitler's command, Goebbels organized a boycott of Jewish businesses. The following year, he led the burning of books deemed "not German enough," which chiefly targeted Jews once again. "The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is at an end," Goebbels declared. During World War II, Goebbels's skill with propaganda was on full display: He turned battlefield losses into victories and raised morale with each speaking engagement.
