ArcaMax

Trump is sloppy. He doesn't seem to know where he stands. He engages in loose talk.

Those bad habits of his were on full display this week when, harkening back to language from Nazi Germany, he endorsed a unified "reich" and flip-flopped on his position on access to birth control. It's a pattern, and a troubling one. And he didn't take responsibility for any of it.

The post on the unified "reich" was in a description of what would happen if he were elected. In the video posted Monday and taken down on Tuesday, the Trump campaign highlighted fake headlines supposedly heralding his accomplishments, including "BORDER IS CLOSED -- 15 MILLION ILLEGAL ALIENS DEPORTED" and "ECONOMY BOOMS." Twice in the clip, text appears beneath the headlines that reads: "Industrial strength significantly increased ... driven by the creation of a unified Reich."

Reich? As in Hitler's Third Reich, the most common usage of the term that technically means regime?

"Is this on his official account? Wow!" Biden responded. "A 'unified Reich'? That's Hitler's language, that's not America's."

The Biden campaign said in a statement that Trump's post "is part of a pattern of his praise for dictators and echoing antisemitic tropes. He's a threat to our democracy and Americans must reject him and stand up for our democracy this November."

That was Monday. The campaign later explained that the video, which was also posted to Trump's Instagram account as well as Truth Social, was made by a supporter while Trump was in court not testifying.

On Tuesday, Trump did an interview with a Pittsburgh radio station about access to birth control. Asked if he would support restrictions on access, he didn't say no.

"We're looking at that," Trump said, seeming to follow on to Justice Clarence Thomas' suggestion in his concurring opinion in the Dobbs case, which overruled Roe v. Wade, where he wrote that the Supreme Court should review its 1965 decision recognizing that married couples had a right to birth control. "I'm going to have a policy on that very shortly," he said. "And I think it's something that you'll find interesting, and it's another issue that's very interesting, but you will find it, I think, very smart. I think it's a smart decision."

The interviewer pushed Trump on whether he was suggesting that he might in fact support restrictions on access to birth control.

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