The Atlanta Police Department has opened an investigation after at least two homemade signs were discovered plastered along roadways early Wednesday depicting Republican Party front-runner Donald Trump as Adolf Hitler.
Signage was spotted on overpass pillars near Monroe and Piedmont and along the Buford Highway Connector, each showing the billionaire presidential hopeful’s face — with the same mustache as the Nazi leader — in the center of a swastika.
Authorities removed the two signs on Wednesday morning, and police spokesman Warren Pickard told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that an investigation is now underway.
Individuals likely put up the signs up late Tuesday or early Wednesday in the wake of comments made by Mr. Trump earlier this week in which he advocated for a moratorium to keep Muslims from entering the United States, the paper reported.
There should be a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” Mr. Trump said at a Monday night campaign rally in South Carolina, “… until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
Those remarks have been nearly universally condemned in the days since by Republicans and Democrats alike, and have evoked comparisons to the policies of Nazi Germany under the Hitler regime.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim advocacy and civil rights group, and the Anti-Defamation League, the world’s leading anti-Semitism organization, have each said that Mr. Trump’s remarks run counter to the ideals the United States was formed upon.
“In the Jewish community, we know all too well what can happen when a particular religious group is singled out for stereotyping and scapegoating. We also know that this country must not give into fear by turning its back on its fundamental values, even at a time of great crisis,” the ADL’s top executive, Jonathan A. Greenblatt, said in a statement. “As we have said so many times, to do otherwise signals to the terrorists that they are winning the battle against democracy and freedom.”
Mr. Trump was asked by ABC News on Tuesday if comparisons to Hitler had given him “any pause at all,” to which he responded: “No.”
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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