NBC host Chuck Todd became the latest person to criticize Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., for comparing U.S. migrant detention centers to concentration camps, during a Wednesday edition of “Meet the Press.”
“You can call our government’s detention of migrants on our southern border many things, depending on how you see it,” Todd began. “It’s a stain on our nation, maybe; a necessary evil to others; […] an untenable situation, perhaps.”
“But you know what you can’t call it?” Todd said, before playing the video in which Ocasio-Cortez made the controversial comparison that has sparked intense backlash.
Todd then went on to explain how Ocasio-Cortez tried to make the distinction between concentration camps and Nazi death camps. Todd ultimately asserted that mass death did indeed happen in concentration camps, and that Nazi camps are “not at all comparable in the slightest” to U.S. facilities.
Todd also condemned other Democrats for failing to call out her rhetoric, characterizing their reluctance as “sheepish.”
“Are we really so ensconced in our political bubbles, liberal and conservative, that we cannot talk about right versus wrong anymore? Some things are bigger than partisanship, or at least they used to be.”
Todd maintained that, with her comments, Ocasio-Cortez did “a tremendous disservice [to the migrants] by distracting from their plight.”
“She said she didn’t use those words lightly,” Todd said. “Well, neither did I.”
