During a town hall in Iowa on Thursday attended by progressive billionaire Tom Steyer, a woman in the audience made a rather outlandish statement:
Through all of this, and through the time [Trump’s] been president, he reminds me of Hitler.
After some in attendance murmured and clapped, she continued, “I just keep thinking: what’s the difference between him and Hitler [because] Hitler really strikes me, and you just mentioned what he’s doing to families at the border. That’s what Hitler did — tore families apart.”
After a brief moment of silence, Steyer replied:
Mr. Trump has — he really is an incredibly skillful and talented communicator. He really is — which Hitler was, too. But let’s not — and I think the reason people push back against the Hitler comparison, regardless of any similarities, is Hitler ended up killing millions and millions of people, and Mr. Trump has shown a disregard for our law, he has been — he breaks the law; he has shown a disrespect for the idea of law; and in many ways, he has done things that we find, or I find, abhorrent. But he hasn’t killed millions of people.
After the audience erupted, seemingly upset by his statement, Steyer tried to quell the audience, saying, “I agree. Look, that’s why we want to impeach him.”
Half jokingly, he added, “We’d like to end it here, while it’s still okay.”
He then walked back to the Hitler comparison: “I think that’s why people push back so hard, because that is a very big difference. We haven’t gotten to that point. God bless us, let’s hope we never get anywhere near that point.”