CNN host Don Lemon used a poem about the Holocaust to describe the loyalty some aides hold to Trump.
As CNN’s cable primetime lineup transitioned from Chris Cuomo to Don Lemon, the two discussed Cuomo’s ending monologue, which analyzed party loyalty to Trump. Cuomo cautioned his viewers to “be on the look out” following the news that Trump appointed his former aide Johnny McEntee as a new “personnel chief,” who would reportedly work to identify those disloyal to the president. “These loyalty tests, I mean this is like straight out of Voldemort’s book … It’s not supposed to be about that. Not supposed to,”Cuomo said, referring to the villain of the Harry Potter series.
“What is the thing? When they came after this person, I didn’t say anything. And then they came after that person, and then they came after this person. And finally there was nobody left,” Lemon said in response to Cuomo.
Lemon was invoking a 1946 poem by German pastor Martin Niemöller, in which he lamented the moral failure of Germans who realized the injustice of the Nazis, but never stood against the Nazi regime.
Niemöller writes, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
A transcript of the poem is on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
