Linda Ronstadt says Trump is 'like Hitler and the Mexicans are the new Jews'

Stephen Proctor
Updated

In a recent interview with Anderson Cooper which partially aired Monday night, Grammy Award winner Linda Ronstadt compared President Trump to Adolf Hitler, citing Trump’s demonization of Mexicans when he announced his candidacy.

This came after she said there are “great parallels” between present-day United States and the Weimar Republic, Germany’s short-lived government that eventually gave way to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party.

“As Hitler rose to power there were a lot of chances to stop him and they didn’t speak out,” Ronstadt said. “And the industrial complex thought that they could control him once they got him in office and, of course, he was uncontrollable. And by the time he got established, he put his own people in place and he, ya know, stacked the courts and did what he had to do to consolidate his power.”

When Cooper challenged her assertion, saying that people would be surprised to hear the comparison between then and now, Ronstadt replied, “If you read the history, you won’t be surprised. It’s exactly the same. Find a common enemy for everybody to hate. I was sure that Trump was gonna get elected the day he announced, and I said it’s gonna be like Hitler and the Mexicans are the new Jews. And sure enough, that’s what he delivered.”

Ronstadt also talked about the rare brain disease, supranuclear palsy, that ended her singing career, and how politics have affected her family in this charged environment.

“It’s a strain on my family relations because some of my family in Tucson are Republicans, and instead of talking about that, we sing together. We’d have a great time,” Ronstadt said, adding, “Now I have to be careful because we’ve had so much taken away from us by this administration, I’m not willing to let him take my family relationships away. My family, the parts that were Republican were fairly rational Republicans. We don’t have that in our current White House.”

Anderson Cooper 360 airs weeknights at 8 p.m. on CNN.

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