Jim Clyburn compares America today to Germany after ‘Hitler was elected’

On the eve of President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn drew a stark comparison about the direction of the country, comparing American politics today to Germany “right after... Hitler was elected.”

The Columbia Democrat made the remarks on CNN on Monday night.

“I can only equate one period of time with what we experience now, and that was what was going on in Germany around 1934, right after the 1932 elections when Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor,” Clyburn said.

“He began to do things to discredit the media, to disrupt the judicial system,” Clyburn said of the Nazi dictator. If Americans aren’t careful, “we could very well see ourselves going the way of Germany.”

Starting in 1933, Hitler dismantled Germany’s democratic and legal institutions before launching World War II and a campaign of genocide that killed 6 million European Jews.

Don Lemon, the CNN host, told Clyburn he might get criticism for the comment.

“You know that’s a stark comparison,” Lemon said. “People are going to say, he’s comparing (Trump) to Hitler and the Holocaust and all those things.”

Clyburn offered a concession, saying a better comparison for Trump might be the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Hitler’s World War II ally. “If I were making that comparison,” said Clyburn, “then this president would be Mussolini and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin would be Hitler.”

It isn’t the first time Clyburn has made a comparison between Trump and Hitler. In August, he made a similar point during a CNN appearance, saying he “told a business group down at Hilton Head several weeks before the election that what I saw coming was a replay of what happened in Nazi Germany.”

Clyburn then was speaking after violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., left one woman dead, and Trump widely was criticized for not strongly condemning the rally.

The lone Democrat in the S.C. congressional delegation, Clyburn said Hitler was able to consolidate his control over Germany because people were influenced by his “foolishness.”

“We just elected a president, and he’s got a lot of foolishness going on, and I’m afraid that too many people are being influenced by that foolishness,” Clyburn said.

This story was originally published January 30, 2018 at 11:41 AM with the headline "Jim Clyburn compares America today to Germany after ‘Hitler was elected’."