Former New Jersey Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman compared Donald Trump’s comments calling for a ban on Muslim entering the United States to those of Adolf Hitler’s in the run-up to World War II.
“If you go and look at your history and you read your history in the lead-up to the Second World War this is the kind of rhetoric that allowed Hitler to move forward,” Whitman told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day” on Wednesday. “Because you have people who were scared the economy was bad, they want someone to blame.”
Republican leaders from Party Chairman Reince Priebus to House Speaker Paul Ryan have denounced Trump’s most recent comments. And some conservatives have labeled Trump a fascist.
But Trump’s most recent comments have drawn comparisons to Hitler, including a front page Tuesday on the Philadelphia Daily News showing Trump with his hand raised looking like a Nazi salute and the headline “The New Furor.” Trump-themed Nazi graffiti was also spotted in Atlanta.
Whitman, was the governor of New Jersey until 2001, when then-President George W. Bush appointed her to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.