For a claim that was meant to dispel controversy, Nicolle Wallace’s assertion this week that “no Democrat has compared Trump to Hitler” has aged with the shelf life of unrefrigerated milk. Wallace’s comments, made during an interview with Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on her The Best People podcast, weren’t just inaccurate — they were demonstrably false and surprisingly easy to debunk.
Let’s start with the context. The discussion between Wallace and Pritzker centered on the Trump-era immigration crackdown — specifically, the deployment of federal law enforcement in cities like Chicago to apprehend undocumented immigrants. Pritzker, who is Jewish, described echoes of authoritarianism, comparing modern-day policies around ID checks and roundups to early signs of pre-Holocaust oppression. He was careful to walk the rhetorical tightrope, saying he wasn’t directly calling Trump Hitler — but was simply pointing out disturbing similarities in approach.
Wallace took that cue and went further, saying not only had Pritzker not made the comparison, but that no Democrat had. That’s where her credibility crumbled.
Because they have. Repeatedly. Publicly. And in some cases, with even less nuance than Pritzker.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a 2023 appearance on The View, drew a clear line from Hitler’s rise in the 1930s to Trump’s rhetoric and political strategy. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina has been making the comparison since Trump’s first term. When pressed directly on whether he was invoking Hitler, Clyburn confirmed, “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett has called Trump “Temu Hitler” — a deliberately provocative label meant to mock and condemn. Beto O’Rourke, in interviews and on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast, directly tied Trump’s rise to Hitler’s early days in office, noting chilling parallels between democratic collapse then and the state of American politics now.
Even Wallace herself isn’t immune to the pattern. In 2018, she invoked Hitler while commenting on Trump’s embrace of the word “nationalist,” saying, “I watch enough History Channel to know that they cheered at Hitler, too.” If that’s not drawing a parallel, it certainly flirts heavily with the notion.
Documentarian Michael Moore, a progressive mainstay, built portions of Fahrenheit 11/9 around the Hitler analogy, overlaying Trump speeches on footage from Nazi rallies. His message: Trump may not be Hitler, but the comparison isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds — and ignoring the similarities could be a fatal mistake.
What Wallace’s blanket denial overlooks is not just the public record, but the underlying tension in the way many Democrats have framed Trump’s presidency: as a unique threat to democratic norms. And when you stake that claim, you inevitably invite comparisons to history’s most notorious anti-democratic leader.
It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between comparing policies and making one-to-one personal equivalencies. But in many cases, Democratic officials and public figures haven’t been subtle. And when challenged on it, they’ve often doubled down — not walked it back.
At best, her comment was an attempt to reframe the discourse. At worst, it was a rewriting of history in real-time. Either way, it leaves observers with a key takeaway: if you’re going to traffic in rhetorical absolutes, you’d better be ready for the receipts.
