Robert Reich on Sunday falsely accused former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich of saying Muslims are like Nazis.
As NewsBusters reported last Monday, Gingrich was quoted by the New York Times as saying that building a mosque at Ground Zero "would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum."
Gingrich elaborated on "Fox & Friends" that very morning:
Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There's no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.
Unfortunately during the Roundtable segment of ABC's "This Week," Reich claimed without challenge that Gingrich said, "Muslims are like Nazis" (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo):
ROBERT REICH: But the upsurge in kind of Islamophobia, George, cannot be explained by anything, it seems to me, other than a kind of intolerance that is fed by -- I don't want to say this, don't want to believe it -- but it seems to me the same kind of intolerance that is feeding the anti-immigrant fever in the United States. It comes from a deep-seated fear and anxiety in Americans right now that is rooted, in turn, in the economy. I mean, people are ready to believe Newt Gingrich when he says that the Muslims are like Nazis. That's outrageous.
Actually, what's outrageous, Bob, is that you would make such a false accusation on national television and nobody would call you out on it.
Gingrich did not say that Muslims are like Nazis.
He said that allowing a mosque at the site where thousands of innocent Americans were senselessly murdered by radical Islamists would be like allowing the Nazis to put a sign next to the Holocaust Museum.
That you would not only misinterpret this as a comparison of all Muslims to Nazis but also say it on national television is the height of intellectual dishonesty, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
