CNN's Christiane Amanpour blasted for comparing Trump's term to Nazis' Kristallnacht: 'Disgusting'

CNN International anchor Christiane Amanpour compared President Donald Trump's four years in office to the Nazis' Kristallnacht. After Amanpour made the comparison of President Trump's first term to the campaign of terror against Jewish people in 1938, the CNN International segment from Thursday was characterized as "despicable" and "disgusting."

"This week 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened," Amanpour said on her interview TV 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 truth.

"After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to normal," she said as images of wrecked storefronts and a book burning were displayed on her show "Amanpour." "And every day 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."

Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," was the two-day onslaught on Jews in Germany that began on the night of Nov. 9, 1938. "Over 250 synagogues were burned, over 7,000 Jewish businesses were trashed and looted, dozens of Jewish people were killed, and Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes were looted while police and fire brigades stood by," according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"The morning after the pogroms 30,000 German Jewish men were arrested for the 'crime' of being Jewish and sent to concentration camps, where hundreds of them perished. Some Jewish women were also arrested and sent to local jails. Businesses owned by Jews were not allowed to reopen unless they were managed by non-Jews. Curfews were placed on Jews, limiting the hours of the day they could leave their homes."

There was a wave of backlash against Amanpour on Twitter.

StopAntisemitism.org reacted to the segment by saying, "Hey @CNN@camanpour please stop using the horrors of the Holocaust to justify an agenda. Our suffering is not yours to play political ping pong with."

StopAntisemitism.org is a self-described organization "that works to hold antisemites accountable and to create consequences for their bigoted actions by exposing the threat that they present to all Americans and showing how their ideologies conflict with American values, morals, and principles."

The Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council called Amanpour's comparison "despicable."

"@camanpour compares verbal fact checking of a POTUS to a Nazi pogrom in which dozens of Jews were murdered. Amanpour uses the book burning of Kristallnacht to reach this comparison thus ignoring the overall deadliness and human cost of the night," the Council tweeted.

"This is not the 'typical' comparison of a political figure to Hitler or Nazism which is sadly done too often. @camanpour took a verbal fact checking thing about a politician and compared it to a specific violent and deadly event (Kristallnacht) by the Nazis."

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said, "A glimpse of what so many of the people who control large corporations, the media and Hollywood really think. That the over 72 million Americans who voted for Trump are supporters of the modern day equivalent of Nazi's."

Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser for the Trump campaign, wrote, "DISGUSTING demeaning of the Holocaust by ⁦@camanpour⁩, ⁦@CNN. How far the left goes to wrongfully attack ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩ is depraved. Will ⁦@cnn do the right thing?"

Sohrab Ahmari, New York Post opinion editor, replied, "@camanpour: 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."

Richochet editor Bethany Mandel told Fox News, "It's disgusting, though not surprising, that a major media figure would use dead Jews as a way to make a cheap political point.

"It is something progressives have done for a long time, disgracing the memory of those who have passed in the Holocaust in order to make a false accusation against the United States president," Mandel continued. "It seems the only time many people care about anti-Semitism is when they can use it to their political advantage."

Last week, Amanpour compared Trump to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by saying, "A reflection on President Trump's comments last night: The last President I covered who refused to accept the vote count in an election was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, 2009."