Donald Trump’s choice to compare the prosecutors handling criminal cases against him to Nazis was “beyond the pale, in terms of offensiveness and ignorance,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Tuesday. The comments came on the heels of the former president’s indictment by a Washington D.C. grand jury, which centered on his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Shortly after news of the indictment broke, Trump posted a statement from his campaign to Truth Social: “The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes.” Those remarks drew condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League. “Comparing this indictment to Nazi Germany in the 1930s is factually incorrect, completely inappropriate and flat out offensive,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on Twitter. “As we have said time and again, such comparisons have no place in politics and are shameful.” Trump has now been criminally charged in New York, Florida and Washington, D.C., with a fourth indictment possible in Georgia in the coming weeks. In his statement, Trump also claimed that he “has always followed the law and the Constitution, with advice from many highly accomplished attorneys”—an argument that CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins noted has been made with more frequency lately.
