Former President Donald Trump’s trial commenced on Monday in New York City and NYT’s Maggie Haberman posted an update from the courtroom: “Trump appears to be sleeping. His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack.”
The post immediately gained traction on X and was almost instantly the talk of cable news panels, shot around Biden world in emails and text messages between White House, campaign aides and other Democrats close to the administration.
“Hitler Pig sleepy,” one individual said on one thread as a caption to Haberman’s post.
Four people in Biden’s orbit told West Wing Playbook that moniker is one that aides to and allies of the president — generally younger, more digitally native individuals, not senior staffers, one person clarified — frequently use to describe Trump.
As West Wing Playbook reported earlier this year, President Joe Biden is often far saltier about Trump behind closed doors than he is in public, even as his willingness to publicly attack his predecessor and likely 2024 challenger in speeches and offhand comments has grown.
It has been noted that after referring to “the former guy” in the months after taking office, Biden is increasingly willing, if not eager, to deliver sharp, frontal attacks on Trump as the fall campaign draws near including at a Tuesday appearance in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he spun a tale about a man drowning in debt before delivering the punchline: “I said I’m sorry, Donald, I can’t help.”
None of the White House and campaign aides who have referred to Trump as “Hitler Pig” expect Biden to go quite that far.
As per the four people who were granted anonymity to speak to West Wing Playbook about the term’s usage in Biden world, it started in late 2022 after Trump invited Nick Fuentes, an avowed white nationalist and Holocaust denier, to dinner at Mar-a-Lago along with the rapper Kanye West.
The Trump campaign did not initially respond to West Wing Playbook’s requests for comment, but did so shortly after this article was published.
“Joe Biden talks a lot about decency, but he and his staff don’t have a decent bone in their bodies,” said Brian Hughes, a senior campaign adviser. “These ridiculous and gross comments reflect the failure and dishonesty of the entire Biden operation.”
Trump shot to the front of a crowded Republican primary field in 2016 by denigrating undocumented immigrants and proposing a ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries, has at times evoked the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler, saying in December 2023 that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Trump later said in a radio interview that he “never knew that Hitler said it” and volunteered that he knew “nothing” about Hitler.
That contradicts reporting going back three decades detailing Trump’s fascination with Hitler. In 1990, Vanity Fair’s Marie Brenner reported that Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, told her divorce lawyer how Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches on his nightstand. And books released after Trump’s presidency ended have contained additional examples.
