Democratic Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen compared President Trump’s remarks about “disloyal” Jewish Americans to something that would be said in fascist Italy or Nazi Germany.
Cohen spoke on MSNBC Live with Hallie Jackson on Wednesday morning, a day after Trump alleged that Jewish Americans who vote for Democratic candidates are either uninformed or disloyal. Trump later clarified that those who fit into that category are specifically disloyal to Israel.
“I was stunned when I heard them,” Cohen responded when asked about the remarks. “I’m Jewish, I’m a very patriotic American. And the idea that I would be disloyal by being a Democrat is just anathema to me. It’s something that you hear really from Mussolini or something from Germany in the ‘30s that you have to be a member of their party, and if you’re not a member of their party, then you’re disloyal to your country.”
He went on, “Most Jewish people are Democrats because Democratic values and Jews are very compatible about caring for others, about having once been in bondage and enslaved in Egypt and having regard for all people in bondage and trying to save people and protect them from slavery and respecting people’s freedoms and opportunities.”
Cohen later hypothesized that Trump “is so simple that he might not even know that saying Jews are disloyal is a trope of anti-Semitism,” arguing that “he may just be that clueless.”
The Tennessee congressman, who has previously compared Trump to Hitler, is not the only person to compare Trump’s recent remarks to Nazi rhetoric. Earlier in the day, MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough alleged that “this is exactly how Jews have been attacked, not only in the Soviet Union but in Germany.”
