Salon and other Leftist opinion outlets don’t like President Trump to the degree that many have claimed Trump is “literally” Hitler, or that we’re “literally” living in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Of course, these claims are stupid. Yet they still make them, hoping to fuel hatred of the president.

Here’s the latest: Since the death camps that would definitively link Trump to Hitler don’t seem to be appearing, a Salon writer tries to claim Trump ending a controversial visa program is just like ethnic cleansing.

Speaking to graduates of the FBI Academy, Trump stated:

“You think the country is giving us their best people? No,” Trump said during a speech at a police officer training program in Quantico, Virginia, and then stated that foreign leaders are permitted to choose the visa recipients. “What kind of a system is that? They come in by a lottery. They give us their worst people, they put them in a bin. But in his hand when he’s picking them is really the worst of the worst. ‘Congratulations, you’re going to the United States, ok.'”

Now, there are plenty of details wrong in that comment, to be sure. In particular, while it is a lottery, it’s not one that foreign nations have a say in. However, Salon isn’t content with picking apart Trump’s inaccuracies, because the important thing to understand here is that Trump is Hitler.

“Those who deny that Trump is a petit-fascist authoritarian often argue that he has not yet engaged in ethnic cleansing,” writer Chauncey DeVega argues. “This objection is imprecise and naive. There need not be prison camps for the logic of ethnic cleansing and racial authoritarianism to apply. Fascism has already begun to adapt itself to fit into American society.”

His evidence for that last sentence is apparently that American society showed insufficient outrage. He continues: “To that end, Donald Trump is using a form of “soft” ethnic cleansing to accomplish his racist, authoritarian goals.”

In other words, replacing a lottery with a more secure immigration system is “soft” Hitler.

Words have meanings, and while progressives love to change those meanings to whatever supports their argument, calling this “ethnic cleansing” is beyond the pale. Comparing Nazi death camps and the mass graves of the Balkans with a visa lottery is not something a rational person should accept.

There are legitimate criticisms to be leveled against this president, just like any other president, but this argument is offensive and pathetic — more so considering the writer is deadly serious.