Hillary Clinton Stands By Hitler Remark, Says Putin Moves ‘Reminiscent’ Of Nazi Aggression
A remark by Hillary Clinton comparing Russian military moves against Ukraine to tactics used by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler got the likely 2016 presidential contender into political hot water earlier this week. But given the chance to walk back her Hitler remark, Clinton did not back down, but offered a clarification.
Clinton was speaking at a private fundraiser in California Tuesday when she made her Hitler remark.
“Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,” Clinton said, comparing the Russian incursion into Crimea to the Hitler invasion of the Sudetenland, an area of Czecholslovakia, by the German military in 1938. “Hitler kept saying, ‘They’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people.’ And that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.”
Putin has said that Russian nationals in Crimea and Ukraine are under “real threats” from the newly formed Ukraine government, and that Russia’s use of force against Ukraine is aimed only at protecting those Russian-speakers.
Speaking at the University of California at Los Angeles on Wednesday, Clinton said that her reported remark was not meant as a direct comparison between Putin and Hitler, but only to point out similarities between the rationales each gave for sending troops into a neighboring country.
“The claims by President Putin and other Russians that they had to go into Crimea and maybe further into eastern Ukraine because they had to protect the Russian minorities,” Clinton said at UCLA, explaining the meaning of her Hitler remark. “That is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when Germany under the Nazis kept talking about how they had to protect German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia and elsewhere throughout Europe.”
When Clinton was Secretary of State, she supported President Barack Obama’s moves to “reset” relations with Putin’s Russia. After her Hitler remark Tuesday, conservative pundits have blasted Clinton for the seeming about-face.
“As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was enthusiastically for the reset with Putin,” said Weekly Standard editor and regular Fox News commentator William Kristol. “Now, as a presidential candidate, she’s appalled by it. Will the real Hillary please stand up?”
Other Republicans saw the Hitler remark as Clinton’s canny way of positioning herself politically on foreign policy issues.
“She is trying to distance herself from the administration and stake out her own policy, which is more in line with moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans than Obama’s is,” said Republican political consultant Ford O’Connell, taking the cynical view of the Hitler remark.
