Donald Trump Shrugs Off Hitler Comparison
He prefers to cite FDR in defending his plan to bar Muslims from the U.S.
— -- Donald Trump's plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States has prompted a comparison to Adolf Hitler, but that hasn’t given the GOP presidential front-runner any pause.
Asked whether "increasingly being compared to Hitler" is cause for concern, Trump told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos today he instead finds comfort in what he sees as his proposal’s similarity to the work of a previous U.S. president.
"No, because what I'm doing is no different than FDR," Trump said during a phone interview this morning.
"This is a president who is highly respected by all," Trump said of Franklin D. Roosevelt. "He did the same thing. If you look at what he was doing, it was far worse. I mean he was talking about the Germans because we were at war. We are now at war.
“We have a president [Obama] who doesn't want to say that, but we are now at war."
Questioned further about which of Roosevelt's policies he supported, specifically whether he supports the idea of internment camps that Roosevelt established to relocate Japanese-Americans during World War II, Trump denied such support, but did cite which of FDR's policies he supports.
The most pointed comparison between Trump and Hitler came this morning when the Philadelphia Daily News published a picture of Trump holding his right hand up at what appears to be a speech, with the headline "The New Furor."
This is not the first time the German Nazi Party leader has come up during this presidential race, as a number of candidates took public positions on whether they would go back in time and kill baby Hitler if they could.
In addition to being widely criticized by Democrats and the White House, Trump has also been criticized by other Republicans, including fellow presidential candidates like Jeb Bush and John Kasich, as well as House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, put out a statement today saying that he also does not agree with Trump’s suggested policy.
"We need to aggressively take on radical Islamic terrorism but not at the expense of our American values," Priebus said in a statement.