LAS VEGAS — Democrats often liken Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler, but a top Nevada senator brought the hyperbole into the 21st century Thursday, saying the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee is an American version of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
“If Donald Trump becomes president, all the money in the bank will disappear because he will be a dictator,” declared Pat Spearman of North Las Vegas. “He will be a dictator. If you don’t believe me, look at Russia, look at Russia.”
“It’s always a concern when a dictator runs for office,” the state Senate president said.. “Let me be clear: I’m always concerned about people still trying to take back rights that we fought for and won. I’m always concerned about people saying we should go back to before 1954,” the year the Supreme Court condemned racially segregated “separate but equal” school systems.
When pressed flatly by The Washington Post: “Are you saying Donald Trump is the equal of Putin?” Spearman replied: “Exactly, exactly.”
The uncomfortable analogy came when Spearman, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel with 29 years of service, was joining a group of military veterans at the local Biden-Harris campaign headquarters to help launch “Veterans and Military Families for Biden-Harris,” a billed “national coalition of organizations” to rally military voters around the embattled Democratic candidate.
“Project 2025 scares me deeply,” Spearman said, “because it goes against Project 1776. It goes against everything we’ve fought for, everything we’ve risked our lives to defend.”
She asserted that the Heritage Foundation document, which Trump has rejected as a post-election blueprint, would fail, saying “it won’t happen during my term.”
Spearman argued that the support of veterans will help select the Silver State’s candidate. “He has our backs, and we’ll have his back in November,” she said. “We’ll go door to door, we’ll make phone calls, we’ll talk to our neighbors, and most importantly, we’ll get to the polls and vote. We’ll focus on the millions of Americans who have died before us, and that their sacrifices were not in vain.”
Shaundell Newsom, an entrepreneur who served in the Air Force for 10 years, said Trump doesn’t care about the military.
“Joe Biden is a military father, so he understands what we’re going through,” he said. “Biden empathizes with us. He doesn’t call us stupid or say other things that the previous president said.”
