NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — President-elect Donald Trump was criticized Thursday for comparing the American intelligence community to Nazi Germany.
Trump made the remarks on Twitter and at a news conference on Wednesday , in reaction to reports that Russia had obtained compromising personal and financial information about him.
He suggested he was being persecuted for defeating other GOP presidential hopefuls and Democrat Hillary Clinton in the election.
“Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public,” he said on Twitter. “One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
At the news conference, he said: “That’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do. I think it’s a disgrace. That information that was false and fake and never happened got released to the public.”
As WCBS 880’s Rich Lamb reported, Anne Frank Center director Steven Goldstein was furious. He called on Trump to apologize for the remarks.
“It is an insult to Holocaust survivors the world over and to the veterans who fought for our nation,” Goldstein said.
Holocaust survivor Evie Blakie, 78, added: “Nazi Germany, which killed my parents, my grandparents and 90 percent of my family and left my life in shambles to be compared to the agencies that protect us here, obviously Mr. Trump does not know or doesn’t care what he is talking about.”
Blakie said the comparison made her “very, very angry.”
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