“Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd is facing heavy backlash after criticizing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for comparing the immigrant detention centers to concentration camps that were operated by Nazi Germany.
Todd said the Nazi camps are “not at all comparable in the slightest” to the centers run by the U.S. on the border. Ocasio-Cortez did “a tremendous disservice [to the migrants] by distracting from their plight,” he said. “She said she didn’t use those words lightly. Well, neither did I.”
Many have come to the New York Democratic representatives defense after Todd’s comments were aired, saying he is being dishonest and does not care about the situation of the immigrants.
You know who doesn’t give a flying f**k about the semantic argument surrounding the phrase “concentration camps” @chucktodd? Children torn from their mothers. Focus on them. And they are camps. That concentrate a particularly vulnerable group of people. https://t.co/L5nn575SAg
— Bradley Whitford (@WhitfordBradley) June 19, 2019
This makes no sense – in one breath, Chuck Todd concedes that @AOC herself says she wasn’t referring to Nazi death camps, but in the next breath he condemns her for invoking “Nazi concentration camps” – which she didn’t. As he himself conceded only seconds earlier. Sigh. https://t.co/fkuC9uuvsn
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) June 19, 2019
Most of these kids will be damaged for life. Shame on you @chucktodd. Lives are being destroyed. https://t.co/EDPwm5IbNn
— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) June 20, 2019
It’s fine if @chucktodd didn’t know concentration camps predated the Holocaust and have been used in other atrocities since, but he *chose* not to look it up, and thus to misinform his viewers, so he could make a #bothsides point and burnish cred with @AOC critics. Really bad.
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) June 19, 2019
Would someone get this gutless little shit Chuck Todd a spot on the Fox and Friends couch so he can do this shit without continuing to embarrass the Meet the Press name? https://t.co/atxjNIu6jp
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) June 19, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez also fired back at Todd, “Well, @chucktodd – the fact that you slipped in “Nazi” when I never said that is pretty unfortunate.”
Well, @chucktodd – the fact that you slipped in “Nazi” when I never said that is pretty unfortunate.
Almost as unfortunate as the fact that you spent this whole time w/o discussing DHS freezers, “dog pounds,” missing children, & human rights abuses that uphold use of this term. https://t.co/1eNuW1ZR0f
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 19, 2019
During her Instagram live, Ocasio-Cortez invoked the Holocaust when she used the phrase “Never again.”
“I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity that ‘Never Again’ means something,” she said. “The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it.”
