OPINION:
The United States Holocaust Museum issued a statement making clear that comparisons of Nazi concentration camps with other matters of historical record or modern-day news are inappropriate.
And though museum officials didn’t name Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they might as well have.
The statement comes on the heels of Ocasio-Cortez’s eye-raising references to President Donald Trump’s migrant detention policies as concentration camps — references she refuses to recant, references she has only dug in deeper to defend.
From the museum: “The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary. That position has repeatedly and unambiguously been made clear in the Museum’s official statement on the matter — a statement that is reiterated and reaffirmed now.”
Why now?
Ocasio-Cortez has been fielding fire for about a week for her concentration camp analogies. But she’s also won some political backing from the likes of Rep. Jerry Nadler and Rep. Ilhan Omar — the latter of whom has been embroiled in her own controversies over perceived anti-Semitic statements.
And with that defense in hand, Ocasio-Cortez shows no signs of apologizing.
One of her latest tweets, in response to an ABC News report about border conditions for children, read this way: “Remember when the Bush administration bulled media into using their devised term ’enhanced interrogation’ instead of the accurate term ’torture?’ Well, waterboarding was torture. And these are concentration camps. Journalism should be about the truth. And this is the truth.”
Sigh. Apologize already, AOC. Just admit a mistake, acknowledge the over-the-top analogy and say sorry for the offense.
Politics is a fast-moving field and by the next media cycle, the matter won’t even be a matter of media interest any longer. But digging in, defending the indefensible, only ensures continued coverage.
It only underscores her analogy to the Holocaust was intended. And that only underscores how utterly moronic Ocasio-Cortez can be when it comes to talking truthful history. Which leads to yet another underscore: She just doesn’t belong in office, representing Americans as a voice of Congress.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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