Hillary Clinton’s reported comments comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s maneuvers to the Nazi regime has earned her praise from unlikely sources.
“Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the 30s,” Clinton said Tuesday night at a fundraising event, as quoted by the Long Beach Press-Telegram. “All the Germans that were … the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, 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.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who criticized President Barack Obama’s foreign policy for fomenting the crisis in Ukraine, tweeted his approval on Wednesday:
She’s right on this comparison: “Hillary Clinton compares Putin actions in Ukraine to Adolf Hitler’s in Nazi Germany” http://t.co/3akjQBTrvz
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) March 5, 2014
He elaborated on Clinton’s remarks to the Washington Post, saying he was “pleased” she commented on the matter.
“If Putin is allowed to go into a sovereign nation on behalf of Russian-speaking people, this is the same thing that Hitler did prior to World War II,” McCain said before knocking Clinton as part of the Obama administration, which he said allowed relations between the U.S. and Russia to break down.
Rubio also told reporters on Wednesday that he saw the parallel between Putin’s intrusion in Ukraine’s Crimea region and the actions of Nazi Germany.
“I think Nazi Germany stands on its own as a unique and barbaric government that’s probably known no peer in terms of its brutality,” he said, as quoted by the Post. “I think the point that she was making, that in terms of the claims that they needed to move into a neighboring country to protect an ethnic group tied to them is certainly similar to the argument that Hitler made in the 1930s.”
