DNC projects message tying Trump to Hitler on Madison Square Garden during rally

The Democratic National Committee is projecting digital messages on Madison Square Garden’s exterior during former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally on Sunday about recent reports that he once praised Adolf Hitler and his generals and that cast him as unhinged.

“Trump praised Hitler,” one of five planned projections from the DNC says, referring to Trump’s longest-serving chief-of-staff, four-star Marine Corps. Gen. John Kelly, telling The Atlantic this week that Trump had admirable things to say about the German dictator.

Trump says he “never said it,” and campaign aides have denied Kelly’s accounts.

Sunday marks the first time the DNC is projecting counterprogramming onto a building while Trump will be inside it, but it’s far from the first time Democrats have deployed the technique. The DNC put projections on Trump Tower in New York City on the night of the vice presidential debate and on Chicago’s Trump International Hotel and Tower during the Democratic National Convention in August.

This time, the stunt comes as some Democrats make comparisons to a 1939 rally supporting Hitler and the Nazi party at a previous reiteration of Madison Square Garden ahead of World War II. Billed as a “Pro American Rally,” the February 1939 event was organized by German American Bund, an pro-Hitler organization, attended by more than 20,000 people and saw an even larger number of counter-protesters outside. 

Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz on Sunday also compared Trump’s rally there to the 1939 rally. 

“Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Walz said, speaking to voters in Nevada. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid 1930s at Madison Square Garden. And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”

Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris have recently increased their criticisms of the former president as they push their final message to voters in the final stretch ahead of the election. In a CNN town hall, Harris agreed that Trump was a fascist and Walz has called comments from the former president “so damn racist.”

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Hillary Clinton said Trump’s choice of venue for his closing message was no coincidence and that he was “actually reenacting the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939,” following similar comparisons from others including New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal.

Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt fired back to say Clinton herself has held events there while her husband, former President Bill Clinton, accepted the Democratic nomination there in 1992.

“Putting aside her hypocrisy, Hillary’s rhetoric about half of the country is disgusting,” Leavitt said in a statement.

Sunday’s rally comes just days after Kelly also told The New York Times Trump has little appreciation of history, saying, “I think he’s lacking in that.”

Trump also personally rebuffed the criticism at a rally later on Friday in Michigan, distancing himself and his base from the comparison. 

“I guess in the 1930s or something, some guy who was inclined toward the Nazis had something, and she said it’s just like the 1930s. No, no, this is called Make America Great Again,” Trump told a crowd in Traverse City.

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison didn’t go as far as to make the same comparison as Clinton but told CBS News in a statement he sees Trump as having “grown increasingly unhinged in the final weeks heading into Election Day; so much so that those who know Trump best are warning voters that he is dangerously unfit to lead.”

To that end, the DNC is also projecting messages onto Madison Square Garden questioning Trump’s competency including, “Trump = Unhinged” and “Trump = Unfit.”

David Schwartz, a trial attorney in New York City, has previously told CBS News it’s illegal to project digital signs in New York City for longer than 60 seconds without a permit. A spokesperson with the DNC, however, said they are aware of the law and complying with it by rotating through individual messages.

contributed to this report.