Jonathan Swan Slams Trump-Hitler Comparisons: ‘They’re Just Totally Invalid’

New York Times reporter and “Regime Change” co-author Jonathan Swan dismissed comparisons between President Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler as “totally invalid.”

In a Wednesday interview, Swan spoke with Axios CEO Jim VandeHei to discuss the current administration and his and Maggie Haberman’s book about the behind-the-scenes of Trump returning to the White House.

One of the revelations from Haberman and Swan’s book a moment where Trump reportedly handed them with a document, supposedly from a “historian” who was later found out to be former professional golfer Gary Player’s caddie, proclaiming that Trump was more powerful than dictators from history like Hitler.

Swan, who is Jewish, argued the document was an expression of “raw power” from Trump, but he stops short when it comes to full-blown Hitler comparisons from the president’s critics.

He said:

One kind of hesitation I had with that list of people he put forward is, you know, I hate the Hitler comparisons. I think they’re just totally invalid. I’m Jewish. Donald Trump’s not wanting to gas all these people and so even the mention of that name creates all sorts of imagery. The point of that story, of Trump handing us this list of names, was that values and morals really didn’t play into it. It was just an expression of raw power so the question then becomes, well what does Donald Trump want to do with that power? And I think it’s a bit of an open question.

Swan had noted that Trump has made major moves, like working with billionaire Elon Musk to end USAID, that leads to speculation from his critics about his feelings towards authoritarianism, but the reporter argued that Trump hasn’t laid out a specific vision for the next couple years, beyond wanting “regime change” in Cuba.

He said:

One of the things we can see pretty clearly is their intent on regime change in Cuba. That’s something that I think they’re going to try to effect. I don’t know how or exactly the mechanism for that, but beyond that he hasn’t really laid out a vision for the last two and a half years of this presidency so it’s a little bit of a black hole. We don’t really know where this is going to lead.

Watch above via Axios.

Jason Cohen contributed to this report. 

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