It seems as of late, the preferred tactic among liberals and the media is to brand any policy idea that they fundamentally disagree with as on par with the atrocity of the Holocaust. From CNN host Don Lemon comparing President Trump to Hitler to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referring to detention centers on the southern border as “concentration camps.” While many rush to condemn these outlandish claims, others have the temerity to defend them.
On Friday night’s edition of Real Time With Bill Maher, a roundtable discussion was held to discuss Ocasio-Cortez’s disgraceful and offensive comment. Maher began by actually pushing back against the remark:
You mention the concentration camp thing. Okay, there was a headline in the L.A. Times about a week ago, that said let's call the detention centers what they are, concentration camps. Then, AOC came out and said that is exactly what they are, they are concentration camps and even invoked the term "never again." Now, they're horrible places, I think we all agree it is just beyond the pale that America would do this to people. Um..and concentration camps, maybe they fit that definition technically, but there are certain words that we just associate with something truly at the ultimate end of horrendous. Holocaust just means a big fire, but we don't use the word, hey, let's go have a holocaust, I'll bring the wieners.
Maher unsurprisingly received blowback for his denouncement of the comparison from his left-wing radio host guests Thom Hartmann and Dan Savage. Savage lamented “So now your..but now you're the one who's demanding an apology and getting in the face of lefties for using the wrong word?” Hartmann attempted to water down Ocasio-Cortez’s comment: “Well, at the same time that Trump is accusing The New York Times of treason, the penalty for which is death, we're upset because AOC is using the phrase concentration camps?”
Savage went down a path to not only defend the comparison but justify it: “But can we agree on the terms, Andrea Pitzer, who wrote the history of the concentration camps, One Long Night, 'A mass detention of people, often political prisoners of war, members of persecuted minority groups without trial.' That is literally what we are doing.”
To the credit of Maher, he was unafraid to fact-check Savage on his false trial claim: “Well no actually, they do get a trial, it just is delayed, we wish it would take longer. But they do, they are there to get a trial, and they do often get a trial. Come on, when we think of concentration camps, I don't know what you think, I think of mass graves, I think of experimenting on human people.”
In what was the most abhorrent statement of the night, Savage invoked his own outrageous comparison: “The concentration camps came first, it was a step on the road to the death camps… we're on the road to fascism, and death camps is an aspect of fascism”.
Maher concluded the segment with a warning to Democrats, “If you want to run a campaign based on reparations and concentration camps then it's going to be very hard to win the election. I'm not saying you can't do it but it would be very hard to argue that this is helping.”
Click to read the transcript below:
Real Time With Bill Maher
6/21/19
10:25:32 PM
BILL MAHER: You mention the concentration camp thing. Okay, there was a headline in the L.A. Times about a week ago, that said let's call the detention centers what they are, concentration camps. Then, AOC came out and said that is exactly what they are, they are concentration camps and even invoked the term "never again." Now, they're horrible places, I think we all agree it is just beyond the pale that America would do this to people. Um..and concentration camps, maybe they fit that definition technically, but there are certain words that we just associate with something truly at the ultimate end of horrendous. Holocaust just means a big fire, but we don't use the word, hey, let's go have a holocaust, I'll bring the wieners.
DAN SAVAGE: So now your.. but now you're the one who's demanding an apology and getting in the face of lefties for using the wrong word?
MAHER: I'm not demanding an apology. No, well, that's a pretty special case. Go ahead..
THOM HARTMANN: Well, at the same time that Trump is accusing "The New York Times" of treason, the penalty for which is death, we're upset because AOC is using the phrase concentration camps?
MAHER: But are they concentration camps?
HARTMANN: No, they are not. I lived in Germany for a year. The death camps were all built outside of Germany. I lived just down the road from an actual concentration camp that was still preserved in Germany.LIZ MAIR: Well, they killed people at Dachau, did they not?
SAVAGE: Andrea Pitzer -- Andrea Pitzer, who wrote the book One Long Night, which is a history --
HARTMANN: It was a labor camp. Yeah people died there, but it was not a death camp.
MAIR: I thought they actually had. Well --
SAVAGE: Well, people are dying in the concentration camps we're putting migrants and separating their children from.
HARTMANN: And these children are dying.
SAVAGE: Right, Andrea Pitzer, who wrote One Long Night --
MAHER: At the same rate they were under Obama.MAIR: Actually --
SAVAGE: No.
MAHER: Well, that's what I read. 24 --
MAIR: Actually, no. I was actually sent some information today that suggests that yes, it spiked a bit, and now it's actually come down a bit. The point is, deaths in these situations are horrible.MAHER: Yes, we all agree there.
MAIR: We can argue about the numbers, but the point is they suck.
SAVAGE: But can we agree on the terms, Andrea Pitzer, who wrote the history of the concentration camps, One Long Night, "A mass detention of people, often political prisoners of war, members of persecuted minority groups without trial." That is literally what we are doing.
MAHER: Well no actually, they do get a trial, it just is delayed, we wish it would take longer. But they do, they are there to get a trial, and they do often get a trial. Come on, when we think of concentration camps, I don't know what you think, I think of mass graves, I think of experimenting on human people --
SAVAGE: The concentration camps came first, it was a step on the road to the death camps.
MAHER: Yes.
SAVAGE: And we need to use the language to describe what is actually happening right here and not hide behind euphemisms.
MAHER: Do you really think we are on the road to death camps?
SAVAGE: I don't -- we're on the road to fascism, and death camps is an aspect of fascism.MAHER: Yes? Wow, and people call me an alarmist.
MAHER: If you want to run a campaign based on reparations and concentration camps then it's going to be very hard to win the election. I'm not saying you can't do it but it would be very hard to argue that this is helping.
