New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) drew fierce backlash for laughing off a report that Republican nominee Donald Trump, when he was president, praised brutal Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to his then-White House chief of staff John Kelly.
“We’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump, from Donald Trump,” Sununu chuckled to CNN’s Kate Bolduan on Wednesday.
“It’s kind of par for the course” and “kind of baked into the vote [for Trump] at this point,” he continued.
Sununu then pivoted to talking about the cost of living.
Bolduan pressed Sununu on Trump’s comments and the governor acknowledged that most Americans wouldn’t like them — but said people were willing to hold their noses and vote for Trump, like he was going to, if it led to a culture change in Washington.
Critics, however, accused Sununu ― who has flip flopped with his opinion on Trump, at one point calling him “crazy” but now fully backing the Republican 2024 ticket ― of normalizing Trump’s fascist rhetoric.
Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,’” wrote on X-formerly-Twitter: “I see... so even Hitler does not move the needle and the extremism is now completely normalized. That kind of acceptance and cowardice is exactly how you get to Fascist governance.”
Others agreed:
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