UFC’s Sean Strickland compared Trump to Hitler while describing the atmosphere at MAGA rallies.
“Aw, dude, it’s f---ing nuts,” Strickland said on the Shawn Ryan Show. “So like, when you’re at a Trump rally, you’re like, ‘Oh, I could definitely see how Hitler happened.’ Like I’m not even f----ing joking to you, dude. When you go to a Trump rally, it makes you question the sanity of everybody.”
“It’s a cult,” the host, a former Navy SEAL, said in response.
Strickland, a former MAGA loyalist, has since become a vocal critic of Trump for his handling of the war with Iran and the release of the Epstein Files. Strickland claimed he was banned from Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 event, but UFC CEO Dana White later claimed he just wasn’t invited. Strickland snuck into a WWE ring set up on the Ellipse, only for Secret Service agents to escort him out.
Strickland, who posed with Trump in photos before turning on him, is known for making racist and homophobic comments, and has called himself a neo-Nazi and a White supremacist in the past. Strickland also said that having a gay son would mean he “failed as a man.”
Strickland said he’d seen Vivek Ramaswamy “rubbing his head” at Trump’s speeches before leaving the rally, but noted Ramaswamy was one of the few attendees who reacted that way.
“Everybody else is just f---ing full send,” Strickland said of Trump’s threats to put people who burn the American flag in prison. “‘Yeah, f--- them! Throw them in jail!’ Like, if Trump said go grab a gun and go do anything, they would f---ing do it. They would f---ing do it.”
Among those who have drawn comparisons between Trump and Hitler are the president himself, who reposted a short text on Truth Social about historical fascism.
“Historically, powerful people were characterized by brutal conquest and the fear that they instilled in the populations that came under their influence,” the text read. “Common names that would come to mind are Alexander the Great, the Caesars, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hunt, Tamburlaine, Napoleon and, more recently, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin.”
When Trump shared the text likening him to fascist dictators, he added, “Sounds good to me!”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
