Pritzker claims no Dems compared Trump to Hitler—he's among the many who have

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is trying to walk back comments comparing Donald Trump to Hitler and MAGA to Nazi Germany.

Appearing Monday on MSNBC’s The Best People podcast, Pritzker told host Nicolle Wallace that he has “never suggested Donald Trump is Hitler.” Wallace didn’t push back on the lie. Instead, she backed his claim, saying, “I don’t think any Democrat has.” She then added that accusations of that are “a smear that they project back onto critics.”

But public record shows the opposite. Democratic leadership from Kamala Harris to Hillary Clinton have repeatedly invoked Hitler or Nazi imagery when attacking Trump and MAGA.

During his February budget speech, Pritzker compared Trump’s use of immigration enforcement to Hitler’s persecution of Jews and minorities, calling it “how authoritarian regimes do it.” He went on to say that he understood the parallels because of his work helping build a Holocaust museum in Chicago. “I can tell you, sitting next to Holocaust survivors, that what they will say in this moment is, ‘This is what happened,’” Pritzker said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently also launched ads that directly compared Trump to Hitler while promoting his redistricting campaign. Newsom’s office defended the campaign, claiming they were “a warning about the dangers of authoritarianism.”

Vice President Kamala Harris called Trump a “fascist” during the 2024 election cycle, referencing reports that he once praised Hitler’s generals and lamented that his own weren’t as loyal. Then-President Joe Biden also accused Trump of using “Hitler’s language” after his campaign used the phrase “unified Reich” in a video posted online.

Other Democrats have echoed the same rhetoric. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) said Trump “used the kinds of words that came from people like Hitler.” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) called him a “wannabe Hitler.” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed Trump was “reenacting a 1939 Nazi rally” when he held an event at Madison Square Garden last year.

Mainstream Democrats have adopted this framing more subtly. Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch called Trump a “fascist” during a recent floor debate, while Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) argued that Trump’s stance toward Russia resembled “appeasement of Hitler.”