The Clinton campaign said Thursday that Donald Trump Jr.’s claim that Republicans would get “the gas chamber” if they conducted themselves in a way similar to the Democratic Party is “extremely insensitive” and “divisive.”
Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, said in a call with reporters that he thinks Trump Jr.’s comment is “probably pretty consistent with the kind of rhetoric he heard around the house when he was growing up.”
“[I]t’s the kind of thing that Donald Trump himself, kind of probably [would] say,” Podesta said. “It’s never acceptable to use language like that.”
The GOP nominee’s son caught flack Thursday morning for saying there would be hell to pay if the members of the Republican Party acted anything like Democrats.
“The media has been her number one surrogate in this. Without the media, this wouldn’t even be a contest, but the media has built her up,” Trump Jr. said in an interview on WPHT radio. “They’ve let her slide on every indiscrepancy, on every lie, on every [Democratic National Committee] game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of this thing. If Republicans were doing that, they’d be warming up the gas chamber right now.”
Many took to be a none-too-subtle Holocaust reference, and the response was swift and critical.
“Donald Trump Jr.’s reference to gas chambers is outrageous. With its allusions to the Holocaust, remarks such as these have no place in a presidential campaign,” the National Jewish Democratic Council said in a statement.
“Yet, it is not surprising that the Republican nominee’s son would use such language, given the pattern of frequent dog-whistling to anti-Semites and that both Trump the elder and Trump the younger previously have retweeted postings from known anti-Semites. Both father and son should apologize immediately for this completely inappropriate and offensive reference,” the statement added.
The Anti-Defamation League added in elsewhere in a series of notes posted to social media, “Trivialization of the Holocaust and gas chambers is NEVER okay.”
“We hope you understand the sensitivity and hurt of making Holocaust jokes. We hope you retract,” the ADL said.
Hillary for America Director of Jewish Outreach, Sarah Bard, also blasted the Trump offspring for his offhand comments.
“Donald Trump Jr.’s recent comments invoking the use of gas chambers to make a political attack show just how insensitive, divisive and reckless the Trump campaign is. The bottom line is this – offensive references to the Holocaust are never acceptable, especially from a presidential campaign,” she said in a statement.
“This is just the latest string of outrageous comments and offensive actions from the Trump campaign. From imposing a Star of David over a sea of dollar bills in a widely shared graphic, retweeting anti-Semitic white supremacists, to remarks he’s made using anti-Semitic stereotypes – the Trump campaign has shown us exactly the type of campaign they are running time and time again, and this campaign will continue to hold them accountable,” it read.
Trump Jr. said later he never meant to refer to the Holocaust, and claimed he was referring only to the method of capital punishment.
The last person in the United States to be executed by gas chamber was Walter LaGrand, a German national who was killed in Arizona on March 3, 1999.
This isn’t the first time that Trump Jr. has invoked execution methods while bemoaning media’s coverage of the 2016 election.
In July, after Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook claimed Russia was meddling in the 2016 election in order to help the GOP campaign, Trump Jr. said the reaction from politicos and pundits would’ve been much uglier had a member of the GOP made a similar comment about the Democrats.
“There’s nothing wrong with a fair fight,” Trump Jr. said in an interview on CNN. “I don’t mind a fair fight, but these lies and the perpetuating of that kind of nonsense to try, you know, gain some political capital is just outrageous.”
“If a Republican did that,” he said, “they would be calling for people to bring out the electric chair.”
The GOP nominee himself once joked he’d get the electric chair if he behaved like his critics.
“Can you imagine if I used the F-bomb?” Trump said after former Mexican President Vincente Fox let loose on the Republican candidate in an interview marked by obscenities. “It would be the electric chair, right?”
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This article has been updated.
