Politifact has ruled on Don Jr’s claim that the Democrat platform was similar to the Nazi platform of 1930.  Their ruling?  Pants on fire.  How could it be anything else?  Politifact is frequently biased towards the Left.  In this case the result is no different and we give them an 80% bias rating in their analysis.  Let’s examine it.

First, for reference, here is our fact check of Donald Trump, Jr’s claim.  Unlike Politifact who skimmed the Nazi platform, we went point by point and showed the similarities.  Politifact started by restating Don’s claim incorrectly, then pointing out all the ways he was correct, and finally by splitting hairs and using technicalities to get to their rating.

What Donald Trump, Jr said: He didn’t say the Democrat platform was Hitler.  He didn’t say they were identical.  In fact, the points he made are really what Politifact should be looking into.  People keep calling the Republicans Nazis and saying that Trump only won because of Nazi support.  What quoted was this:

“You see the Nazi platform from the early 1930s … look at it compared to the DNC (Democratic Party) platform of today, you’re saying, ‘Man, those things are awfully similar’ to a point where it’s actually scary. It’s the exact opposite of what you’ve been told.”

What he also said was “I’ve been out hearing the left talking about all these things, fascism, Nazism on the right, and when you look at the actual history of how these things evolved, and when you actually look at that platform versus the platform of the modern left, you say wait a minute, those two are really heavily aligned and, frankly, contrary to the right.”

Here’s the actual interview.  Politifact links to it, but it’s worth watching because the context of his statement is that the Left are the ones out there calling Republicans Nazis, and it’s simply not what lines up with the facts.

Politifact then goes on to ironically quote an academic historian who says Democrats have absolutely nothing in common with the Nazi party.  This is at the top of the article, not halfway down where they admit there were many similarities.  But then they make their first huge error.

Politifact argues that Hitler did not run on the Nazi platform and that the platform was a compromise, not what Hitler wanted.  But he didn’t say the Democrats were Hitler.  He said their platform was like the early Nazi platform.  At this point Politifact is no longer factchecking what Donald Trump, Jr actually said.  They are now factchecking a caricature they have created based on their misunderstanding.

“Some points sound similar”

Here’s the funny part of the Politifact article.  They name six points in the Nazi platform that are, just as Donald Trump, Jr said, similar to the DNC platform.  We found more, but Politifact is charitable to the DNC.  In fact, they go on to say they feel that ending war profiteering, nationalizing certain corporations, ending land speculation, and oppression of media that is contrary to the state are not goals of the DNC.  But even if we leave Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out of this, these were high priorities of the Obama administration.

In fact, many of the new regulations after the 2008 crash were to prevent land speculation, Obama nationalized portions of the auto industry, and Democrats have spent the last 60 years fighting against war profiteering. Dinesh D’Souza who made the film Don Jr went to see was pardoned by the Trump administration after Obama threw him in jail for a slap on the wrist campaign finance crime.

In Politifact’s summation, they admit that there are similarities.  They try to say that of the six similarities they will admit to, they are also in the Republican platform.  Although, according to their article only half of those six are similar to Republican platform points.  Then rather than ruling half true, partly true, or even mostly untrue, they slap a pants on fire rating.  We believe Donald Trump, Jr’s claim deserves a half true rating at the bare minimum.  When you throw in the diversity of DNC candidates who will affect future platforms, including rising star Ocasio-Cortez, this claim would be mostly true if it weren’t for the technicality that this next year’s platform hasn’t been written yet.