Freshman GOP Congressman Invokes the Holocaust When Slamming DirecTV’s Removal of Newsmax

Freshman Republican Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) invoked the Holocaust on Tuesday night when giving a House floor speech criticizing DirecTV for removing Newsmax from its programming line-up.

“Last year, the DHS, our own federal government tried to set up its own disinformation board. And now we see entities, businesses that the federal government has given special privilege to to provide over the air television, cable television right away to deliver entertainment to the homes of individuals across America that these companies choose to silence conservative speech by first de-platforming or eliminating One America News,” Burlison began, offering some pretty standard fare from the House GOP conference.

“And now they’re going after Newsmax,” he continued, bringing up the Holocaust.

“You know, there’s a famous quote about what happened during the Holocaust when individuals when the Nazis first came for some and people said nothing and then eventually they’ll come for you. And I say this not as a Republican or a Missourian, but as a concerned citizen for a country who has these rights that were here because of the blood that was shed by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of patriots from the time of the American Revolution until today,” Burlison concluded in a clip shared online by independent journalist Aaron Rupar.

Notably, Newsmax was removed from DirecTV due to the right-wing network demanding a rate increase. “On multiple occasions, we made it clear to Newsmax that we wanted to continue to offer the network, but ultimately Newsmax’s demands for rate increases would have led to significantly higher costs that we would have to pass on to our broad customer base,” DirecTV said in a statement at the time. Newsmax was replaced on DirecTV with the right-wing commentary network The First, which features Bill O’Reilly.

Watch the full clip above via C-SPAN

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