Tom Arnold: ‘This Is Exactly How It Started, Germany 1930’s, Families Rounded Up’

Actor Tom Arnold takes part in a panel discussion for the Variety screening of 'Happy
Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images
Hannah Knudsen

Actor Tom Arnold compared the U.S. to Nazi Germany on Saturday in an attempt to slam the Trump administration’s use of migrant shelters on the southern border, claiming that this is “exactly how it started [in] Germany.”

“I’m Jewish. My uncle wrote The Secret Life of Adolf Hitler & grandfather was a medic in the 42nd Rainbow Division that liberated Dachau. This is exactly how it started Germany 1930’s Families rounded up, separated & put in cages,” Tom Arnold said in response to a Twitter user who superimposed a Nazi helmet on Vice President Mike Pence’s head and a Nazi flag behind him in a deep fake video clip.

“For those people who want to blame Mike Pence for lying about the conditions in the immigrant concentration camps, just remember; he was only ‘following orders,'” the user wrote, in a tweet with the Pence CNN video attached.

The vice president visited migrant shelters in the McAllen, Texas, area on Friday and sat down for an interview with CNN senior White House correspondent Pamela Brown, blasting individuals who routinely insult Customs and Border Protection agents and frequently compare migrant shelters to concentration camps.

“I hope first and foremost that we put to the lie this slander against Customs and Border Protection. People saying that families and children are being held in concentration camps is an outrage,” Pence said. “The Nazis killed people. Our Customs and Border Protection, as you heard today, are saving lives every day.”

Anderson Cooper 360 aired the interview but split the screen, showing a sizable group of male migrants in an overcrowded room. Pence called the network out on Twitter, informing followers that he also visited women and children who reportedly told said they were “being treated well.”

He wrote:

CNN is so dishonest. Today we took reporters to a detention facility on the border for families and children and all told us they were being treated well. The crisis at our southern border is not a “manufactured crisis”, it is real and is overwhelming our system. To show this, we also visited an overcrowded facility for adult men, many of whom have been arrested multiple times. These men were in a temporary holding area because Democrats in Congress have refused to fund additional bed space. Rather than broadcast the full story, showing the compassionate care the American people are providing to vulnerable families, tonight CNN only played video of men in the temporary facility and didn’t play any footage of the family facility at all…ignoring the excellent care being provided to families and children. Our great @CBP agents deserve better and the American people deserve the whole story from CNN!

Arnold is far from the first ultra-left wing celebrity or politician who has irresponsibly compared migrant shelters to concentration camps. Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) sparked the political firestorm after describing them as such during an Instagram live video last month.

“That is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her initial video. “The fact that concentrations camps are now an institutionalized practice in the Home of the Free is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it.”

She continued to double down for weeks, despite Holocaust survivors, Holocaust centers, and Polish politicians correcting her.

“I went through it. How can you – looking at my face – tell me that the camps that they have in the south are concentration camps?” Holocaust survivor Sami Steigmann asked in a Turning Point USA video.

“You are insulting every victim of the Holocaust,” he added. “Shame on you.”

Over the weekend, former View co-host Rosie O’Donnell spoke at the “Lights for Liberty: A Vigil to End Human Concentration Camps” protest in New York — one of hundreds across the country — and made a call to take the “fascist” out of the White House.

“The signs are beautiful. The sentiment here is beautiful. Don’t forget people. Look around. This is who we are,” she said. “This is what America stands for. All colors all shapes all sizes, all nationalities, sexualities, genders, transgender.”

“Freedom is what we were founded on. Freedom and decency are what we must demand from this government and never stop. Never forget until we take the fascist out of the White House,” O’Donnell said to applause.

She also appeared on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen in June and directly compared migrant shelters to concentration camps.

“Yeah, the concentration camps, even though there’s lots of controversy about the word,” O’Donnell told Cohen. “But, actually, legitimate scholars who study genocide say, yes, these are, in fact, the criteria for concentration camps, they meet them. There are over 100,000 camps, in nearly every state.”

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