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Trump compared by MS NOW contributor to a less 'serious' Hitler who's 'selling merch'
By Lindsay Kornick
Published March 14, 2026
MS NOW contributor Anand Giridharadas argued in an interview this week that President Donald Trump was an unserious form of Adolf Hitler because at least Hitler was "very serious" about his actions and didn't "sell merch."
Giridharadas told former ABC journalist Terry Moran on his "Real Patriotism" Substack account Wednesday that a growing number of Trump's followers "see through him" as a "weak man pretending to be a strong man."
He then went even further and suggested Trump didn't even measure up to other dictators like Hitler or Stalin.
Anand Giridharadas said Hitler was more "serious" and competent than President Donald Trump. (Getty Images)
"He's not up there with the great historical dictators," Giridharadas said. "He's trying to do that. The attempt is very much in progress. But I think it's also important that we don't, you know, concede the ground to him in advance. I think he's like a highly incompetent person trying to do an authoritarian attempt and trying to barnacle the authoritarian attempt with so much personal stealing and whatever, which, by the way, a lot of these authoritarians have the discipline to not do. I don't know. Someone's going to call me on, maybe I'm wrong. I don't think Hitler was selling merch."
He continued, "Hitler was very serious on his awful project. I don't know that Mao [Zedong] or [Joseph] Stalin and all these people were trying to do serious other things in addition to the thing, right? So he's like an unserious authoritarian. He's like a part-time side hustle authoritarian, which I think has limited the power of the attempt."
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MS NOW declined to comment but confirmed that Giridharadas is still a contributor for the network.
MS NOW confirmed Anand Giridharadas is still a network contributor. (Screenshot/MSNBC)
Fox News Digital also reached out to the White House for comment.
Giridharadas has expressed controversial opinions as an MS NOW contributor in the past, such as suggesting billionaires be outlawed because they are "antithetical" to democracy.
He also frequently attacked Tesla CEO Elon Musk after his purchase of Twitter, claiming that Musk only cared about protecting free speech for White men.
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Though comparing Trump to Hitler has been a common attack against the president, some media commentators have gone as far as to suggest Trump is more dangerous.
"A lot of people have tried to draw similarities between Mussolini and Hitler and the use of the terminology like ‘vermin’ and the drive that those men had towards autocracy and dictatorship. The difference, though, I think makes Donald Trump even more dangerous, and that is he has no philosophy he believes in. He is not trying to expand the boundaries of the United States of America," MS NOW contributor Claire McCaskill said in 2023.
Other commentators have suggested President Donald Trump is worse than Adolf Hitler over the past few years. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
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"Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler," MS NOW guest and psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee wrote on X (then Twitter) in 2020. "At least Hitler improved the daily life of his followers, had discipline, and required more of himself to gain the respect of his followers. Even with the same pathology, there are varying degrees of competence."
https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-compared-ms-now-contributor-less-serious-hitler-whos-selling-merch