Prominent Rabbi Condemns Phil Murphy’s Offensive Hitler Comparison

After being bombarded with calls to apologize for offensively comparing President Trump to Hitler and Nazi Germany, New Jersey Democrat gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy decided to double down on his words, saying we should “take the comment for what it is.” Now, one of America’s most influential rabbis is condemning Murphy’s offensive comments as desecrating the Holocaust and an “affront to decency.”

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes:

“It is hard to imagine that I need to say this, but any statement that associates a democratically elected president, however objectionable he may be to his opponents, to a genocidal maniac is beyond the pale. You can love Trump. You can hate Trump. But comparing him to Hitler is grotesque and an abasement of our politics.

I feel stupid even having to say this. But Hitler ran gas chambers and crematoria that murdered on average 10,000 Jews a day for three years. Comparing anyone to him, especially the President of the United States, is an affront to decency and every moral tenet.”

I do not know Murphy. I assume he’s a good man with good intentions. However, he has trivialized the Holocaust and degraded the political discourse below the nadir I thought we had reached. It is unacceptable that a man with aspirations to lead the great state of New Jersey would invoke the memory of Hitler to score political points. Murphy should apologize and retract his words.

In making repeated inflammatory and ridiculous statements, Phil Murphy clearly does not realize the extremity and absurdness of comparing President Trump to an evil mass murdering dictator. Murphy should stop the offensive rhetoric and apologize to the people of New Jersey.