AUSTIN, Texas — Hillary Clinton likened Donald Trump's rally in Ohio last weekend to Adolf Hitler courting Nazis, a comparison that drew a sharp rebuke from a spokesman for the former president.
"I remember as a young student, you know, trying to figure out, how people get basically brought in by Hitler. How did that happen? I'd watch newsreels and I'd see this guy standing up there ranting and raving, and people shouting and raising their arms. I thought, 'What's happened to these people?'" Clinton said at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
"You saw the rally in Ohio the other night, Trump is there ranting and raving for more than an hour, and you have these rows of young men with their arms raised. I thought, what is going on?"
Trump hosted a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, last Saturday in support of US Senate candidate JD Vance, who is facing Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman.
Some Trump supporters in attendance raised one index finger in the air at the end of the former president's speech.
"My fellow citizens, this incredible journey we’re on together has only just begun, and it is time to start talking about greatness for our country again. We are one movement, one people, one family, and one glorious American nation," Trump told the crowd.
Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Trump, accused Clinton of "using some of the most disgusting smears imaginable."
"It seems like perpetual-failed-candidate Hillary Clinton’s basket of deplorables has run stale, not unlike herself," Budowich told Fox News Digital in a statement. "It’s pathetic, it’s divisive, and it is further cementing her legacy of cringe."
Other politicians also compared Trump's event to a Nazi rally.
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New York state Sen. Anna Kaplan, a Democrat who represents parts of Long Island, called on Americans to join her "in sharply denouncing the use of Nazi symbolism and imagery anywhere in our political process."
"Last night at a rally held by the former President, and today at a political rally held by a candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, supporters were urged to hold up their right hands in a unified salute that should shock the conscience of every American for its remarkable similarity to the 'Heil Hitler' salute used by the Nazis," Kaplan said in a statement on Sunday.
Clinton also railed against Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, saying that she's worried about the undermining of the rule of law.
"I think it is fair to say we're in a struggle between democracy and autocracy," she said Friday.
