On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” singer Linda Ronstadt compared President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler during her interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Ronstadt said, “Some of my family in Tucson are Republicans.”
She continued, “I have to be careful because we’ve had so much taken away from us by this administration that I’m not willing to let him take my family relationships away. The parts that were Republican were fairly rational Republicans. We don’t have that in that current White House.”
Cooper said, “I’ve read that you have read a lot about the Weimar Republic in Germany, and you sort of see parallels between then and now.”
Ronstadt said, “Great parallels. I mean the intelligentsia of Berlin and literati and all artists were just doing their thing, and as Hitler rose to power, there were a lot of chances to stop him, and they didn’t speak out. The industrial complex thought they could control him once they got him in office, and of course, he was not controllable. By the time he got established, he put his own people in place and stacked the courts and did what he had to do to consolidate his power, and we got Hitler. He destroyed Germany, destroyed centuries of intellectual history, forward and backward. People like Beethoven, Goethe, and Thomas Mann became jokes. They became Nazi laughing stocks.”
Cooper pushed, “I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear comparisons between what happened then and now.”
Ronstadt said, “If you read the history, you won’t be surprised. It is exactly the same. You find a common enemy for everybody to hate. I was sure that Trump was going to get elected the day he announced. I said he’s going to—it is going to be like Hitler and the Mexicans are the new Jews. And sure enough, that is what he delivered.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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