This weekend, Donald Trump lovingly quoted Pat Buchanan in a series of tweets promoting the border wall that has caused the longest shutdown in American history, a remarkable evolution for a guy that Trump once called a “Hitler-lover” to anyone who would listen.

On Sunday, Trump posted a pair of tweets referencing a recent Buchanan column urging Trump to make good on his threat to fund the border wall by declaring a national emergency:

The Trump portrait of an unsustainable Border Crisis is dead on. “In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with Criminal Records, including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes & 4000 violent killings.” America’s Southern…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2019

….Border is eventually going to be militarized and defended or the United States, as we have known it, is going to cease to exist…And Americans will not go gentle into that good night. Patrick Buchanan. The great people of our Country demand proper Border Security NOW! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2019



But when Trump was considering a run for president in 1999, he trashed Buchanan as a “Hitler-lover” who also didn’t like “blacks,” and he did so in almost comically political terms.

In a 1999 Meet the Press interview, posted above, then-moderator Tim Russert asked Trump about Buchanan’s potential Reform Party candidacy, which Trump called “ridiculous.”

“Why?” Russert asked.

“Because look, he’s a Hitler-lover,” Trump replied, adding that “He doesn’t like the blacks, he doesn’t like the gays. It’s just incredible that anybody could embrace this guy.”

In another 1999 interview on CNN, host Larry King asked Trump what issues he thought would be of importance to Reform Party voters.

“Well, for one thing, I’m not in love with Adolf Hitler, OK?” Trump replied.

“You are saying you didn’t like Hitler?” King asked.

“I didn’t like him,” Trump said at the time. Since then, Trump has called the Nazis who marched in Charlottesville “very fine people,” and while he hasn’t personally weighed in on Hitler, a White House press secretary has claimed [falsely] that Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

Trump went on to tell King, oddly, that Hitler would “be an issue for some people,” and assessed that a Buchanan candidacy would siphon pro-Hitler votes away from the Republicans.

Trump is now a member of the Republican Party.

Also in October, Trump told then-Today Show host Matt Lauer that Buchanan “seems to respect and admire Adolf Hitler, which is, you know, not a very ‘in’ thing to do.”

In a November interview with Wolf Blitzer, Trump said that Buchanan has “got a love affair going with Adolf Hitler,” and that “He’s against blacks.”

That same month, Trump told then-CNBC host Geraldo Rivera that Buchanan had “obviously got a love affair going with Adolf Hitler,” and added that he couldn’t “imagine that being very popular at this time and date and place.”

Trump also slammed Buchanan in a pair of op-eds, for the Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, and in each piece congratulated himself for condemning Buchanan, while slamming elected Republicans for failing to do so as quickly.

A lot has changed since 1999, including, apparently, Trump’s ability to “embrace” a “Hitler-lover” with whom he now agrees on at least one topic.

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