Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke drew a comparison between 1930s Nazi Germany and America under the Trump administration during a Wednesday interview Wednesday with the Washington Post.
O’Rourke’s comments came after Costa pressed him over his ability to reach across the aisle to work with Republicans after making intensely disparaging comments about them on the campaign trail.
“I don’t think that speaking the truth and calling things by their right names is in any way disqualifying in being able to do work going forward. I think sooner rather than later, a majority of Americans — including Republicans — are going to see Trump for who he is, and this administration for what it’s done,” O’Rourke told the Washington Post’s Robert Costa when challenged.
“Outside of the Third Reich, give me another example of a Western leader who has called one people of one faith inherently defective, or dangerous, or disqualified from being successful in that country,” he continued. “ . . . How did a modern country, well educated, a source of innovation and ingenuity, and a source of moral leadership in the world, descend into that level of barbarity, producing a shame that lives with every single German to this day?”
O’Rourke also sparred with Meghan McCain in July over his characterization of a Trump rally in North Carolina as an “impromptu Nuremberg rally.”
The former Texas Congressman has also gone after conservatives over gun rights and religious freedom in recent weeks. In September’s Democratic debate, O’Rourke advocated for assault weapon confiscation, infamously saying “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.” And during an “Equality Town Hall” hosted by CNN on October 10, O’Rourke implied that religious institutions could lose their tax-exempt status for opposing same-sex marriage.
A profile of New York Representative Max Rose published in New York Magazine on October 11 showed the freshman Democrat taking aim at O’Rourke for his radical policy proposals.
“When you win you get to help people, and when you lose you get to be a social-media rock star. So I don’t think Beto is cool, and I don’t think losing is cool,” Rose said. “Losing is not as cool as he thinks it is.”