‘Clearly They Stand By It!’ CNN Torpedoes Trump Excuses About ‘Unified Reich’ Video

CNN correspondent Alayna Treene and anchor Sara Sidner torpedoed Trump campaign excuses about a video promising a “unified Reich” if ex-President Donald Trump wins, concluding they “clearly stand by” the video at this point.

Trump’s repeated Hitler-echoing comments have earned him negative headlines for months — even as he continued to use the language — as did news that he praised Hitler to his then-chief of staff.

On Monday, Trump posted a video that referenced a “unified Reich” beneath headlines about a Trump victory.

The Trump campaign put out a statement distancing itself from the video, blaming a staffer and making other excuses. But on Tuesday’s edition of CNN News Central, Sidner and Treene called BS on those efforts by pointing out that the video has not been taken down:

ALAYNA TREENE: So you can see there. Sara, it’s it’s a little, it’s a small text at the bottom of this video, but still obviously drew very fierce backlash from many people, including the Biden campaign.

And I want to be clear, the word right typically refers to German empires. However, it’s obviously been more closely associated with Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. And that’s why, of course, this is receiving so much backlash.

Now, the Trump campaign, in a statement to me this morning, tried to walk this back, they said that “This was a video that was shared by a staffer while Donald Trump was in the courtroom,” and that they did not realize that it had this language in it and tried to really distance themselves.

Here’s a statement from Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. She said, quote, “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.”.

Now, despite that, I will say the video still up! And this was brought to their attention yesterday. I asked the Trump campaign, you know, if this is what you’re saying, why have you not removed this video from Donald Trump’s account?

We did not get an answer to that.

Now, here is what the Biden campaign is pushing back on. They said, quote, “America, stop scrolling and pay attention. Donald Trump is not playing games. He is telling America exactly what he intends to do if he regains power rule as a dictator over a unified Reich.”.

And that’s from Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer. And look, we we did see as well the Associated Press first reported this.

But the language in that video seems to be copied word from word for word, from a Wikipedia page referencing World War One. And so this is very troubling.

And obviously, we know that Donald Trump has shared some kind of anti-Semitic rhetoric and, and images on social media before.

And so this is something that many people are calling attention to. And, of course, we saw the Biden campaign speaking out against this very sharply. Sara.

SARA SIDNER: I think the key thing that you just reported is that you brought it up to them. You asked, you know, about it. They tried to step back from it, but it’s still up. So clearly at this point, they stand by it!

Alayna Treene, thank you so much for your reporting.

Watch above via CNN News Central.