CNN Analyst Compares Trump Comment to Hitler, Fails To Realize Biden Said Same Thing 8 Yrs Ago
President Donald Trump gave the keynote address at the 2019 edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, so you could bet there would be plenty of Literally Hitler™ comparisons on social media.
And lo and behold, there were a few to be found on reputable news outlets, too.
To analyze the president’s speech, CNN — which really ought to change its motto from “The most trusted name in news” to “Kind of like if your Twitter feed turned itself into a constant video stream” — brought on Samantha Vinograd, one of its national security analysts.
She took particular issue with one phrase from Trump’s speech. Let me paste the snippet and see if you can guess what it is.
“The men and women here today are on the front lines of protecting America’s interests, defending America’s value, and reclaiming our nation’s priceless heritage,” Trump said during his address, according to The Daily Wire.
“With your help, we are reversing decades of blunders and betrayals. These are serious, serious betrayals to our nation and to everything we stand for. It’s been done by the failed ruling class that enriched foreign countries at our expense. It wasn’t America first, in many cases it was America last. Those days are over, long over.”
This is pretty typical stuff as Trump goes. But you know what Vinograd saw: Hitler.
CNN’s Sam Vinograd compares President Donald Trump’s CPAC speech to Adolf Hitler murdering 6 million Jews in the Holocaust
She also suggests, without evidence, that Putin wrote Trump’s speech pic.twitter.com/7rn7bryQGn
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) March 2, 2019
“His statement makes me sick, on a personal level, preserving your heritage, reclaiming our heritage, that sounds a lot like a certain leader that killed members of my family and about six million other Jews in the 1940s,” Vinograd said.
Oh, please. It’s moments like these where I not only can’t pretend to follow why the president’s rivals believe him to be akin to Der Fuhrer, I can’t even pretend to want to. You think he’s a Nazi? Fantastic. Let’s move along.
If you decided to sit through the whole clip, you also saw that Vinograd claimed that Trump “denigrated our institutions — the Department of Justice and U.S. Congress” and that “he was also saying things that really looked like Vladimir Putin scripted his speech.” So just in case you were playing CPAC CNN Coverage Bingo at home, you had a Nazi reference, claims of erosion of institutions and leaden joke about the leader of Russia acting as Trump’s puppet-master.
All I need is someone to say “I never thought I would be seeing this happen in my country” and I have a winning card. Better start scouring the DVR.
A funny thing happened on the way to declaring Donald Trump a member of the NSDAP, however. It seems that Vinograd, as one conservative Twitterer pointed out, is a senior fellow at the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware. (Actually senior advisor, but who’s counting?) I wonder what the patron of that institute might have to say about phrases like “reclaiming our heritage?”
Sam, a Senior Advisor at the Biden Institute, says “‘preserving our heritage, reclaiming our heritage,’ that sounds a lot like” Hitler.
Joe Biden in 2011: “It’s time to fight back! It’s time to reclaim our heritage!” pic.twitter.com/MKn3HHPrL1
— Matt Wolking (@MattWolking) March 3, 2019
That, for one, and only eight years ago!
Keep one thing in mind here: While I’m sure it factored into her decision to point out this phrase as being Hitler-esque, at no point does she mention the fact that the individual who said it had anything to do with it.
Vinograd’s exact wording was: “preserving your heritage, reclaiming our heritage, that sounds a lot like a certain leader that killed members of my family and about six million other Jews in the 1940s.”
Biden’s use of the phrase, one assumes, doesn’t make her too sick, as she still appears to be in the employ of the Biden Institute. Either that, or the anti-nausea medication works fairly well when she’s forced to do that side of her job.
But one assumes she’s never had to take a dose of it. The reason the words make her sick is because they come from Trump, and because they come from Trump it’s therefore comparable to something Adolf Hitler said. Period.
It’s gotten to the point where a phrase that’s been used by politicians of all stripes in hundreds of languages throughout the annals of time is now specifically relatable to Hitler and the Holocaust because Donald Trump is using it.
If that’s your take, then fine, but by sharing it you’ve also removed any claim on people taking your words seriously, particularly as it regards the president.
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