Legendary singer Linda Rondstadt, famous for her 1975 hit "When Will I Be Loved," made clear in an interview that she holds no love for President Donald Trump.
Ahead of the CNN premiere of The Sound of My Voice, a documentary about her life, Ronstadt noted similarities to the ascension of President Donald Trump and the world's most notorious world leader: Adolf Hitler.
Hitler led the campaign to slaughter millions of Jews and other marginalized groups throughout Europe during World War II. Ronstadt noted similar factors in their rises to power.
She began with:
"I was sure that Trump was going to get elected, the day he announced. I said, 'It's going to be like Hitler, and the Mexicans are the new Jews.'"
Trump infamously referred to Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and "murderers," which some have said is reminiscent of the way Hitler stoked fear and resentment of Jews in Germany, paving the way for a growing nationalism that culminated in their genocide.
Ronstadt said Hitler rose due to the hesitation of others to speak out against him.
"The intelligentsia of Berlin, and the literati, and all the artists were just busy doing their thing. 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."
Cooper noted that some would be surprised at Ronstadt's comparison, to which she responded:
"If you read the history, you won't be surprised, it's exactly the same."
Many Republicans and Democrats alike vowed to give Trump the benefit of the doubt upon his ascension to the Presidency, with some asserting that he would rise to the nobility of the office.
Trump has yet to fulfill those hopes, and it doesn't seem likely that he will.
As far as putting "his own people in place" and "stack[ing] the courts," Trump has appointed donors like Gordon Sondland to ambassadorships and white supremacists like Stephen Miller to advisor positions. He's appointed two Supreme Court justices and is set to appoint a record number of federal judges to courts around the nation.
Comparing Trump with Hitler may seem extreme, but as far as the conditions of growing nationalism and surprising political victories they levied to come to power, the two are more similar than appears.
The Trump administration's targeting of non-white undocumented immigrants is disturbing.
The administration isn't without its own brand of anti-Semitism either.
Trump has previously criticized Democratic Jews as "disloyal" for voting against him despite his support of Israel, implying that American Jews are inherently loyal to Israel. When white supremacists and Nazis marched in the streets of Charlottesville exclaiming, "Jews will not replace us," Trump insisted that some of them were "very fine people."
Mount Sinai Medical
@Acyn/X