Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday lobbed a question at Attorney General Jeff Sessions that should have produced a slam-dunk answer.
Ingraham played footage of former CIA director Michael Hayden and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) comparing the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families with the practices of Nazi Germany — rhetoric that could easily be called over the top, given the present situation at the nation’s southern border, however objectionable most Americans might find it, does not match the atrocity of history’s most infamous genocide.
Yet Sessions offered a different argument when Ingraham asked, “What’s going on here?”
“Well, it’s a real exaggeration, because in Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country,” Sessions replied.
So the difference, according to Sessions, is Nazis were trying to keep Jews in the country, whereas the Trump administration is trying to keep immigrants out of the country. Of all the ways he could have drawn a contrast, Sessions picked that one. He did not mention the gas chambers or the starvation; he said what puts Nazis in another, worse category is that “they were keeping the Jews from leaving.”
Ingraham’s nonverbal reaction suggested even she thought that maybe, just maybe, Sessions had not presented the strongest argument.