by Harold Hutchison
Republican strategist Scott Jennings said Wednesday night that he’s “heard” comparisons of prominent Republicans to German dictator Adolf Hitler going back to the George W. Bush administration during a panel on CNN.
Vice President Kamala Harris used a Wednesday press conference to highlight claims from an article in The Atlantic that former President Donald Trump expressed a desire for generals like those who served under Hitler. Jennings told Jamal Simmons, a former aide to Harris, that he was “calloused” to Hitler comparisons.
“Now, I’m calloused on this Hitler business because I lived through the Bush years and I used to peer out my window onto Pennsylvania Avenue and I saw everybody marching around in their brown uniforms, signs up, ‘Bush is Hitler, Bush is Hitler,’” Jennings said. “And then they did it to John McCain. They did it to Mitt Romney. They’ve done it to Donald Trump. Even did it to Paul Ryan, I recall at one point. So I’ve heard it all before.”
Prior to listing Republicans who Democrats had compared to the Nazi leader, Jennings noted that vulnerable Democratic Senators were touting their ability to work with Trump.
“It probably will shock Kamala Harris and the rest of her campaign staff to learn that there are incumbent Democrat U.S. senators in this country right now running television ads touting all their work with this modern-day Hitler,” Jennings said, later adding, “I mean, if he were really Hitler, if he were really a threat to democracy, not a single Democrat in this country would be running ads touting their work with Donald Trump.”
Jennings then said that anti-Israel protests on college campuses where demonstrators made statements like “resistance is justified” and chanted “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that has connotations of wiping out Israel, made antisemitism appear to be coming from left-wing sources.
“I think the reason Democrats are freaking out about it right now is because what they have learned is that it‘s not Republicans who are the Hitlers or the Nazis, it‘s actually emanating from within their own party,” Jennings said. “If you want to find Hitler-ish, Nazi-esque antisemitic tendencies, look on the left, not on the right.”
When Simmons claimed Jennings was trying to dodge the point about Trump, Jennings cut him off.
“She literally spoke in front of the Naval Observatory today, ‘Trump is Hitler,’” Jennings said in reference to Harris.
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Harold Hutchison is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
