Early yesterday morning, Donald Trump decided to retweet a Benito Mussolini quote originally posted by Twitter bot that Gawker had made several months ago, expressly for the purpose of goading Trump into retweeting a Benito Mussolini quote. In sending out that one little tweet, Donald Trump proved the point we had in mind when we created that bot: to show that Trump’s rhetoric is often indistinguishable from that of history’s most vainglorious and authoritarian fascist dictators—Benito Mussolini, specifically.



"@ilduce2016: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” – @realDonaldTrump #MakeAmericaGreatAgain" — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2016

The bot had a cache of several dozen quotes, each one widely attributed to Benito Mussolini but credited, in this case, to Donald Trump. And apparently, the sound of Mussolini’s words next to his name delighted Trump enough for him to pull it out from among the barrage of countless other tweets making up his notifications. After all—it certainly sounded like something Donald Trump would say.

In fact, a lot of the founding father of fascism’s words sound like Trump-isms, so it’s hard to blame him for being confused. No need to take our word for it. Go ahead and see for yourself.

It’s not as easy as it looks.