This is older than than NPR admits. The threat of foreign others “ruining the country” by voting goes back to 1865 and emancipated black men getting the franchise.
I take Trump at his word that he’s never read Mein Kampf. The joke in Nazi Germany was that Mein Kampf was like the bible, everybody had a copy, but nobody read it. I tried to read it once, it was impenetrable and made lots of references to Weimar politics that went over my head.
But this isn’t the defense Trump thinks it is. Either he’s been listening to someone influenced by Hitler (my pet theory), or he thinks in parallel with the Fuhrer.
The biggest difference in spending between the US and countries like China, Russia, and India is not that we have X times as much or better weapons, it’s that our soldiers and defense contractors are paid US salaries in US dollars.