CNN host Christiane Amanpour apologized Monday for her recent comments that she said inappropriately “juxtaposed” the infamous Nazi “Kristallnacht” with President Donald Trump’s administration.
“I shouldn’t have juxtaposed the two thoughts,” she told “Amanpour” viewers, “Hitler and his evil stand alone, of course, in history. I regret any pain my statement may have caused.”
Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass,” was an anti-Semitic pogrom incited by the Nazi leadership that resulted in thousands of Jewish shops being vandalized and synagogues burned to the ground Almost 100 Jews died during the terror while hundreds, perhaps thousands, were sent to concentration camps. (RELATED: CNN Anchor Describes Bin Laden’s Death As A ‘Nothing Burger’ Compared To Soleimani Killing)
The CNN host explained that she made the remarks as she observed the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht. “It is the event that began the horrors of the Holocaust,” she said. “I also noted President Trump’s attacks on history, facts, knowledge and truth.”
“This week 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened,” Amanpour said Thursday during her show. “It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity and, in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and proof.”
“After four years of a modern day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden/Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth,” she stated. “And every day [President-elect] Joe Biden makes presidential announcements about good governance and the health and security of the American people, while the great, brooding figure of his defeated opponent rages, conducting purges of perceived enemies and preventing a transition.”
Amanpour insisted Monday her “point was to say how democracy can potentially slip away and how we must always zealously guard our democratic values.”
President Donald Trump speaks about Operation Warp Speed in the Rose Garden at the White House on Nov. 13, 2020 in Washington, DC. The is the first time President Trump has spoken since election night last week, as COVID-19 infections surge in the United States. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Critics were quick to condemn Amanpour for conflating Nazi persecution of the Jews with Trump. The non-profit foundation StopAntisemitism.org demanded she and CNN “stop using the horrors of the Holocaust to justify an agenda.” (RELATED: ‘A Little Bit Like Hitler’: Ex-Democratic Senator, Obama Ambassador Compares Trump’s ‘China Rhetoric’ To Nazi Germany)
She faced a backlash from other journalists as well, with New York Times opinion editor Sohrab Amari tweeting, “I’m ashamed to have to count you an Iranian compatriot. This is a grotesque abuse of history, a horrific, ahistorical equivalence-drawing, a shameful cheapening of the Shoah.”