It was a big news story in mid-November when Donald Trump at a rally used the word "vermin": "We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," Trump told a New Hampshire crowd.

That sent the mainstream media, and President Joe Biden, into overdrive. NPR published a piece called, "Why Trump's authoritarian language about 'vermin' matters." Trump's "vermin" comment echoes Nazi Germany, Axios reported Biden as saying. "Trump's rhetoric now bounces around from confusion to rodent-like terms once used by fascist leaders Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini," wrote USA Today. 

Marianne LeVine wrote a piece for the Washington Post entitled, "Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini."

“The language is the language that dictators use to instill fear,” said Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you’re saying they’re not human. That’s what dictators do.”

Matt Orfalea has done a deep dig into the Washington Post and its own use of the words "rats" and "vermin," and there's quite a long trail. 

Excuse us if we didn't get the vapors after Trump used the word vermin, having been called fascists and Nazis for four years. It seems the editors at the Post have long been using dehumanizing language like Hitler to encourage violence against Republicans. Maybe the Post can do a piece on itself echoing Hitler and Mussolini.