Donald Trump says he is not bothered by comparisons to Hitler
The comparison between Donald Trump and Hitler is being made more and more frequently — including on the cover of Tuesday's Philadelphia Daily News — but the Republican front-runner said Tuesday that the comparison doesn't bother him.
“You're increasingly being compared to Hitler,” ABC News' George Stephanopoulos said during an interview with Trump on “Good Morning America” Tuesday. “Does that give you any pause at all?”
“No,” Trump responded, “because what I am doing is no different than what FDR — FDR's solution for Germans, Italians, Japanese, you know, many years ago.”
Stephanopoulos jumped in as Trump kept talking: “So you're for internment camps?”
“This is a president who is highly respected by all,” Trump said of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “He did the same thing — if you look at what he was doing, it was far worse.”
Trump's answer was confusing and meandering but he seemed to be making the point that during times of war, more extreme measures must be used.
“We are now at war,” Trump said. “We have a president that doesn't want to say that, but we are now at war.”
“I've got to press you on that, sir,”Stephanopoulos said. “So you're praising FDR there, I take it you're praising the setting up of internment camps for Japanese during World War II?”
“No, I'm not,” Trump responded. “No, I'm not. No, I'm not.”
Trump then rattled off the numbers of some of the presidential proclamations Roosevelt issued “having to do with alien Germans, alien Italians, alien Japanese.”
“They went through a whole list of things — they couldn't go five miles from their homes, they weren't allowed to use radios, flashlights,” Trump said. “Take a look at what FDR did many years ago, and he's one of the most highly respected presidents... They named highways after him.”
Stephanopoulos responded: “You want to bring back policies like that?”
After a pause, Trump responded: “No, I don't to bring it back, George. At all. I don't like doing it at all. It's a temporary measure until our representatives, many of whom are grossly incompetent, until our representatives can figure out what's going on.”
Washington Post
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