Echoing Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro Compares Trump’s America To Nazi Germany
Echoing fellow Democrat Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro compared Donald Trump’s America to the Third Reich, The Washington Examiner reports.
As The Intercept reported, during a campaign event on Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke compared Donald Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric to Nazi Germany. O’Rourke ripped into Trump for referring to migrants and asylum seekers as “animals,” suggesting that such rhetoric would not have been out of place in authoritarian far-right regimes such as the Third Reich.
“I might expect someone to describe another human being as an infestation in the Third Reich. I would not expect it in the United States of America,” O’Rourke said.
O’Rourke later repeated his remarks, reaffirming once again that Trump’s rhetoric and immigration policy don’t belong in modern-day America.
But as the Intercept notes, this was not the first time for the Texas Democrat to draw a comparison between Nazi Germany and the United States under President Donald Trump; he had done so during his midterm campaign against Ted Cruz.
While Trump supporters may find O’Rourke’s statements hyperbolic and alarmist, Democrat Julian Castro does not. During an appearance on MSNBC, Castro agreed with O’Rourke’s statements, and expressed support for his colleague.
According to Castro, who is also running for president, Trump’s statements are dehumanizing and O’Rourke was right to call them out.
“What the president is trying to do is to dehumanize, to otherize these immigrants. And that’s very similar, whether it’s to what Congressman O’Rourke was talking about or other regimes that try and dehumanize people. And I believe that we are better than that,” he said.
The Democrat then doubled down on the comparison between Trump’s America and Nazi Germany, but continued his remarks in a more optimistic tone, arguing that the United States will not go down the path of the Third Reich, because Trump will be defeated in 2020. Castro concluded that Trump is purposely stoking fear in order to benefit his own agenda.
Beto compared Trump’s immigration rhetoric to Nazi Germany. Activists say that’s not enough. https://t.co/PPcgUwZw3K pic.twitter.com/xUTEiC09HO
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) April 6, 2019
“However, it’s very clear that we have a president who is bound and determined to dehumanize people to create a fear and paranoia about them in order to boost his own political fortunes,” he said.
Donald Trump campaigned as an immigration hardliner, so it comes as no surprise that he is governing as one as well. Critics have accused the president of frequently using racist rhetoric to pander to his base of supporters and manufacture consent for his immigration crackdowns.
Trump on immigrants who scale dangerous, sharp-edged border wall: You "deserve whatever you can get"https://t.co/3ytej7olGg pic.twitter.com/Cqqfl3wJU9
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) April 6, 2019
As previously reported by The Inquisitr, the administration appears to have embarked on yet another immigration crackdown, with the president taking aim at asylum seekers and threatening to slap Mexico with automobile tariffs unless it does more to help curb illegal immigration into the United States. The president has also threatened to shut the southern border down completely.
