CNN Analyst Compares Trump to Nazis, Then Old Tweets Re-Surface
CNN analyst Ana Navarro was the subject of intense criticism for a Monday tweet in which she re-phrased a famous poem about the Holocaust to take aim at President Donald Trump. Her latest comparison came despite prior posts that seemed to warn against doing the exact same thing.
Navarro was responding to the news that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is stepping down from his bureau post several months before he was expected to do so.
Though the White House denied McCabe was forced to leave early, there has been speculation that Trump wanted him gone.
According to Navarro, the departures of McCabe and former FBI Director James Comey — as well as the potential firings of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and special counsel Robert Mueller — are comparable to the murders of millions of Jews that took place in Nazi Germany during Adolf Hitler’s rule.
“First, he came for Comey, & they didn’t speak out b/c they were Trump apologists,” Navarro, a Republican strategist, tweeted. “Then, he came for McCabe, & they didn’t speak out b/c they were Trump apologists.”
“Next, he’ll come for Rosestein & they won’t speak out b/c they’re Trump apologists,” she added. “Last, he’ll come for Mueller…”
As noted by Fox News, Navarro’s tweet follows much the same structure as anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous “First they came…” poem. Niemöller’s work denounced German citizens for ignoring the warnings signs as Hitler rose to power and gradually trampled on the rights of ethnic and ideological minorities.
Though Navarro seemed to have no qualms about comparing Trump to Hitler, that exact sentiment is one she has warned against multiple times in the past.
In July 2015, she told her followers that it is never appropriate to make Holocaust or rape comparisons in order to push an agenda.
“Unsolicited advice: always, always stay away from Holocaust and rape similes, jokes and metaphors,” she wrote at the time. “No comparison. Never quite ends well.”
Less than a year ago, Navarro expressed similar sentiments, blasting a user who had compared senior White House adviser Stephen Miller to Joseph Goebbels — the Nazis’ chief propagandist.
“Out of respect for those who died in the Holocaust, at the hands of uniquely evil people, I don’t like or engage in Nazi/Hitler comparisons,” she wrote.
But this time, it was Navarro who was criticized, as many people didn’t find it appropriate to compare Trump to the Nazi regime.
“Stop belittling the Holocaust with your stupid Nazi analogies,” David Harsanyi, a senior editor at The Federalist, wrote in response to Navarro’s Monday tweet.
“(A) good rule of thumb is to not compare things that are not the Holocaust to the Holocaust”,” added Weekly Standard reporter Haley Byrd.
Washington Examiner commentary writer Beckett Adams, meanwhile, suggested that Navarro should “keep things in perspective.”
“Maybe this sort of frenzied hyperbole makes for good TV. But it certainly doesn’t make for good analysis,” Adams wrote.
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