At a private donor event this weekend, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump compared the Biden administration to the Gestapo, the Nazi-era secret police force in Germany. According to The New York Times, Trump said: “These people are running a Gestapo administration.” The White House released an official statement denouncing Trump’s comments.
Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick said that it’s “always wrong, offensive, and despicable to make comparisons like this.” She added: “[It’s] especially heinous to use Nazi comparisons in the service of a bigoted, authoritarian agenda.”
On Inside with Jen Psaki on Sunday, U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who is Jewish, said of Trump’s comments: “It telegraphs some very dark intentions on his part.”
.@RepRaskin: “Americans are forewarned. If you look at the things he’s talking about doing mass roundups and incarceration and deportations… That is an authoritarian program. That’s right out of the authoritarian playbook of Mussolini and beyond.” pic.twitter.com/W5ZqTAedy6
— Inside with Jen Psaki (@InsideWithPsaki) May 5, 2024
Raskin added that historically opportunists and demagogues like Trump “have always been able to fool some significant part of the population for a certain period of time.”
He added: “If you look at the things he’s talking about doing mass roundups and incarceration and deportations… That is an authoritarian program. That’s right out of the authoritarian playbook of Mussolini and beyond.”