by Harold Hutchison
Republican strategist Scott Jennings said Wednesday night that he had “heard” comparisons from prominent Republicans to German dictator Adolf Hitler dating back to the George W. Bush administration during a panel on CNN.
Vice President Kamala Harris took advantage of Wednesday press conference to underline claims from an article in The Atlantic that former President Donald Trump expressed a desire to have generals like those who served under Hitler. Jennings told Jamal Simmons, a former adviser to Harris, that he was “desensitized” to comparisons to Hitler.
“Now I’m desensitized to this Hitler thing because I lived through the Bush years and I looked out my window on Pennsylvania Avenue and I saw everyone marching in their brown uniforms, signing, ‘Bush to Hitler, Bush to Hitler,’” Jennings said. “And then they did it to John McCain. They did it to Mitt Romney. They did it to Donald Trump. I remember he even did it to Paul Ryan at one point. So I’ve heard it all before.
Before naming Republicans whom Democrats compared to the Nazi leader, Jennings noted that vulnerable Democratic senators had praised their ability to work with Trump.
“It will probably shock Kamala Harris and the rest of her campaign staff to learn that there are currently Democratic U.S. senators in this country who are running television ads praising all their cooperation with this modern-day Hitler,” Jennings said, later adding: “I mean, If he were really Hitler, if he really was a threat to democracy, no Democrat in this country would be running ads praising their work with Donald Trump.
Jennings then said it was anti-Israel protests on college campuses, where demonstrators made statements such as “resistance is justified” and chanted “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a slogan that connotations the annihilation of Israel made anti-Semitism appear to come from leftist sources.
“I think the reason Democrats are panicking so much right now is because they’ve learned that it’s not Republicans who are Hitler or Nazis, but it’s actually coming from within their own party,” Jennings said. “If you want to find Nazi, Nazi anti-Semitic tendencies, look to the left, not the right.”
When Simmons claimed Jennings was trying to avoid discussing Trump, Jennings interrupted him.
“She literally spoke in front of the Naval Observatory today: ‘Trump is Hitler,’” Jennings said, referring to Harris.
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Harold Hutchison is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.