It is scandalous that Jewish organizational leadership has largely ignored the Harris campaign’s careful and ever so clever efforts to create the image of Donald Trump as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. And it is not only that they seized upon and exploited the uncorroborated comments of a disgruntled Trump White House chief of staff, which they certainly did.
More fundamentally, it is also suggesting that there is any equivalence between one’s mere political opponent and the author of the incomprehensible horrors of the Holocaust distorts their historicity and that of their victims.
John F. Kelly is a 45-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who rose to the ranks of Four-Star General on the road to becoming President Donald Trump’s chief of staff. He is the picture of the gruff, hard-driving, no-nonsense soldier who evolved from someone who took orders to one who gave them.
We can only speculate, but we cannot imagine that there was perfect harmony between Kelly and the, at least equally hard driving Trump, also used to giving orders.
At all events, several weeks ago Kelly was interviewed by The New York Times and claimed that Trump had supposedly made statements like “Hitler did some good things too,” and that he “wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had” who will be “loyal to him personally.” Kelly also opined that Trump fit his definition of “fascist” for his right wing and autocratic bent.
But nowhere did Kelly equate Trump with Hitler. Yet the story was spun in the Harris compliant media as if he had and it went viral. And from Ms. Harris on down, no one in her camp did anything to tamp down the leap. To the contrary, she underscored it: “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans. All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is.”
We had rather thought that this sort of thing was beyond the pale. Yet the leaders of our vaunted Jewish organizations said nothing. But they should have.
