On Sunday's Up with David Gura on MSNBC, during a panel discussion of President Donald Trump criticizing U.S. immigration policy during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, host Gura invited Lynn Sweet -- Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Sun-Times -- to complain about Jews who have responded favorably to Trump's rhetoric that was earlier in the segment likened to Nazi Germany.
After the segment began at 9:18 a.m. Eastern, the Nazi references began flying early on as panel member and liberal immigration activist Khizr Khan gave his reaction to President Trump wanting to tighten the requirements for refugees seeking asylum. Gura cued him up by referring to Trump's speech and posing:
I want to start first with what we heard the President say there. He was reprising something he said on Friday on a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border. I keep thinking about "The New Colossus," that poem by Emma Lazarus about the "tired and the poor yearning to breathe free," coming to the United States, emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty here in New York City. This, sir, is a startlingly different message the United States is sending to the world.
Khan accused President Trump of using immigration to supply "red meat" to his base and distract from other matters, and then added:
This hate against immigrants is a page from the Nazi Germany's playbook, and the result of that was Second World War. He is following that line all over again, sowing division and hatred, because most of America has figured it out that he does not have any policy...
After Khan concluded his Trump-bashing, Gura turned to Sweet and picked up the Nazi reference as he then invited her to make her own hyperbolic analysis: "Lynn, I see you nodding, and that comment there -- this analog to the Nazi regime -- is something that we heard from former Congressman Beto O'Rourke on the campaign trail this week."
Sweet then began:
I would like to pick up on that, and I thank Mr. Khan for bringing it up because, of all the groups speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, to say that the country is full. I just want to read something from the United States Holocaust Museum that I pulled in anticipation of this coming up that I think is a reminder that, of all the groups that he was talking to, and this was from the Holocaust Museum, when you think about a welcoming country.
She then read: "'Like most other countries, the United States did not welcome Jewish refugees from Europe. In 1939, 83 percent of Americans were opposed to the admission of refugees.'"
Sweet added:
That is something to think about, that of all the groups that the President would go to, and all the groups there were not picking up on the point afterwards that the country is full up, you would have thought that of all the groups, and with the exception, I guess, of this group, it has been Jewish groups that are well aware of the anti-Jewish immigration policies of the 1930s that with other nations that kept Jews who were -- ended up being murdered during the Holocaust from coming to the United States.
She then concluded: "So you would think that of all the groups for President Trump to give the message the country is full, saying it to a Jewish group is particularly, particularly something of note."
