Music icon Linda Ronstadt said President Trump is like Adolf Hitler and Mexicans are the “new Jews” in a scathing new interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
In the interview that partially aired Monday night, the ten-time Grammy-winning singer claimed that there are “great parallels” between the U.S. and Germany’s Weimar Republic, which briefly preceded the Nazi era.
“As Hitler rose to power there were a lot of chances to stop him and they didn’t speak out,” Ms. Ronstadt, 73, said. “And the industrial complex thought that they could control him once they got him in office and, of course, he was not controllable. And by the time he got established, he put his own people in place and he, you know, stacked the courts and did what he had to do to consolidate his power.”
Mr. Cooper countered that people might be “surprised” to hear such an extreme comparison.
“If you read the history, you won’t be surprised,” Ms. Ranstadt replied. “It’s exactly the same. Find a common enemy for everybody to hate. I was sure that Trump was gonna get elected the day he announced, and I said it’s gonna be like Hitler and the Mexicans are the new Jews. And sure enough, that’s what he delivered.”
Ms. Ronstadt, who retired in 2011 after being diagnosed with supranuclear palsy, a rare brain disease, also spoke about how her inability to sing has impacted her relationship with more conservative family members.
“It’s a strain on my family relations because some of my family in Tucson are Republicans, and instead of talking about that, we sing together. We’d have a great time,” she said, Yahoo reported. “Now I have to be careful because we’ve had so much taken away from us by this administration, I’m not willing to let him take my family relationships away. My family, the parts that were Republican were fairly rational Republicans. We don’t have that in our current White House.”
