Stop Comparing Political Rivals to Nazis

In fits of hyperbolic condemnation for President Trump and the America First movement, political and media leftists continue to escalate their rhetoric and now reach almost casually for comparisons to Hitler and his evil Nazi regime.  Such obscene references poison our public dialogue, demean the horror suffered by Holocaust victims, and betray the heroism of our American military veterans. 

On Thursday, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke appeared at a campaign event in Carroll, Iowa and castigated President Trump’s tough talk on illegal border crossings as reminiscent of the “Third Reich.”  O’Rourke told the story of a visit to an elementary school where a “third grade girl, who was handing us the hand-drawn Valentines, who happens to be Mexican American, says: ‘Why does the president not like me?’” Quite frankly, I find O’Rourke’s setup difficult to accept, as it conveniently fits the popular but dubious narrative of the “woke 8 year old.” Even more suspiciously, it almost precisely replicates the story Playboy’s White House correspondent, Brian Karem, tweeted: that a “young Hispanic boy” on the Washington subway “saw my press pass and asked me ‘why does the president hate me?’”

But regardless of the veracity of these accounts, O’Rourke leapt at the opportunity to compare Trump to Nazis.  He told the audience that the president “went on to call asylum seekers animals. … Now, we would not be surprised if in the Third Reich other human beings were described as an infestation, as a cockroach, or a pest you would want to kill.”

First, President Trump did not, at all, call asylum seekers “animals,” but rather very clearly directed that descriptor toward violent MS-13 gang assailants. Trump opponents have lied about these “animal” comments almost as often as they have propagated the totally discredited Charlottesville hoax, the myth that he called neo-Nazi supremacists “fine people.”  

The extremist O’Rourke clearly disagrees vehemently with Trump on U.S. border sovereignty, even arguing to tear down already existing barricades. While his open-borders fantasies represent awful policy, he at least displays honesty in publicly staking out his highly unpopular view.  But he also delves into demonization, comparing Trump and border enforcement to the most evil regime of modern history, one that systemically slaughtered millions of people.