Who Is Calling Who a Nazi?

by Sara Lehmann

2/20/2025, 1:35:16 PM

The use of Nazi imagery has become so ubiquitous among Democrats as to almost preclude notice. But Governor JB Pritzker’s parallels between President Trump’s political agenda and the rise of Nazi Germany during his State of the State budget address on Wednesday hit a new conspicuous low.

Veering from his budget speech, Pritzker, who is Jewish, referred to Nazis no less than six times during his criticism of President Trump and his policies. In a glaring warning to Illinois citizens, Pritzker compared the rise of the Nazis to the Republican Party leader in the White House.

Castigating President Trump’s policies, including the deportation of violent illegal criminals, Pritzker invoked a shocking and totally inaccurate correlation. “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic,” he said.

Such deceitful criticism of President Trump reeks of partisan animosity of the basest kind. And the most dangerous. The governor’s confusing use of Nazi imagery is targeting the wrong culprit and, in the process, exonerating the real perpetrators.

Pritzker’s comments lend fuel to the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protestors who have regularly used Nazi euphemisms against the Jews, libeling them as “genocide” perpetrators in Gaza and calling for the “final solution” for Jews all over the world. And his comments ignore the reality of a president, who was praised by Prime Minister Netanyahu as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”

Indeed, Pritzker’s rebuke of President Trump comes the same day that the Trump administration stopped all funding for the Palestinian Authority, which continues their Pay-for-Slay policies, paying terrorists in jail for murdering Jews. It comes two days after Israel received a shipment of heavy MK-84 bombs from the United States, following President Trump’s lifting of a block imposed on the export of the munitions by the Biden administration.

Pritzker must not have gotten the memo regarding President Trump’s executive order two weeks ago outlining a broad federal crackdown on “the explosion of antisemitism” in the U.S., especially on college campuses. The executive order cites “an unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism and violence”. And it instructs U.S. policy to use “all available and appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.” This includes cancelling visas of foreign students who are “Hamas sympathizers” and deport “pro-jihadist” protesters.

Indeed, if any use of Holocaust imagery was justified, it was President Trump’s description of the release of Jewish hostages from Hamas terrorist captivity last week. President Trump said that emaciated and tortured released hostages Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami “looked like Holocaust survivors”. And he doubled down on the necessity to totally defeat Hamas.

The Israel Heritage Foundation condemns Pritzker’s words in the strongest terms. The organization was founded to perpetuate the memory of the six million Holocaust victims through education, safeguard the State of Israel’s security and combat antisemitism.

Rabbi David Katz, Executive Director of Israel Heritage Foundation, and the son and son-in-law of Holocaust survivors, immediately tweeted out his shock and dismay. “Governor JB Pritzker’s comparison of the Trump administration to the Nazi regime is deeply disturbing and unacceptable. It diminishes the Holocaust’s atrocities and harms the memories of the 6 million lives lost. We urge Governor Pritzker to apologize. We also call on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to condemn this statement and reaffirm responsible discourse.”

Jerry Wartski is the Honorary President of Israel Heritage Foundation and himself a Holocaust survivor, whose parents and many family members were murdered by the Nazis. He is infuriated that Pritzker drew parallels between President Trump and the Nazis. “What Pritzker says is mentally sick,” Wartski said. “The fact that he said this, especially as a Jew, is an affront to all Holocaust survivors. It hurts.”

Jonathan Burkan, Honorary Chairman of Israel Heritage Foundation, is similarly outraged by Pritzker’s statements. Appointed by President Trump in 2019 to serve a five-year term as a United States Holocaust Memorial Council Member in Washington, DC, Burkan demands a condemnation of Pritzker by the museum. “If the museum does not denounce Pritzker for this outrage,” he said, “it would contradict one of its own objectives, namely to prevent the normalizing of the Holocaust, which increases the chances of it happening again.”

Democrats and their cohorts are tripping over themselves while pouncing on Trump. But in the process, they are tripping themselves up. Calling President Trump, Israel’s greatest advocate, a Nazi the day before the kidnapped bodies of the Bibas family were returned to Israel in coffins is a depravity no elected official should ever be exonerated for.