Elise Stefanik Says Candidate She Endorsed Was Not Actually Praising Hitler When He Called Hitler ‘The Kind of Leader We Need Today’

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If you’re looking for an example of an inspirational political leader, Adolf Hitler is not whom most people would call a prudent choice for whatever admirable attribute you wish to highlight. Republican House candidate Carl Paladino seemed to have no such qualms, lauding the Nazi Führer as “the kind of leader we need today” in a radio interview last year.

In a February 2021 interview with Buffalo, New York station WBEN, Paladino brought up Hitler unprompted, in response to a question from show host Peter Hunt about how politicians could “rouse the population” and “get people thinking” about how to take action and effect change in New York, as reported by liberal watchdog group Media Matters.

The full transcript of the question and Paladino’s answer, according to Media Matters:

PETER HUNT (HOST): We’ve been talking a lot about politics here today, this morning, Carl. And I know that that’s obviously near and dear to your heart. And you’ve taken, you’ve taken real action. And a lot — like you were saying earlier, many people don’t voice their opinion or just become, see it as utter futility. How do you rouse the population? How do you get people thinking about the possibility of change here in New York state and what that might mean for our, for everyone here?

CARL PALADINO: I was thinking the other day about somebody had mentioned on the radio Adolf Hitler and how he aroused the crowds. And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just — they were hypnotized by him. That’s, I guess, I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it, so that it’s not a strange new world to him. I look around at the politicians that we’ve elected locally and I, I just can’t [unintelligible] on a federal level, I can’t get comfortable with the RINO-ism. And on a state level, we — our Republicans are sound asleep. They’re not an anti-government group. They don’t get up with new press releases to comment on this issue, comment on that issue. I mean, there should be a debate going on in the newspaper every day.

Paladino, a real estate developer, previously ran for New York Governor in 2010, winning the Republican nomination and then getting trounced by Democrat Andrew Cuomo 63 percent to 33 percent.

He is now seeking the party’s nomination for New York’s 27th Congressional District, comprising parts of the Buffalo and Rochester suburbs. The current representative, Rep. Chris King (R-NY), dropped out of running for re-election after he voiced support for gun control measures in the wake of the mass shootings at a Buffalo grocery store and a Uvalde, Texas elementary school and lost all of his Republican endorsements.

House GOP Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) endorsed Paladino for the seat shortly after Jacobs bowed out. Both Paladino and Stefanik attempted to walk back his comments praising Hitler, with both Republicans claiming he was taken out of context, according to the Huffington Post.

“I condemn any statement, but don’t take it out of context,” Stefanik said to HuffPost. “That is not accurate reporting.”

“Any implication that I support Hitler or any of the sick and disgusting actions of the Nazi regime is a new low for the media,” said Paladino in a statement. “The context of my statement was in regards to something I heard on the radio from someone else and was repeating, I understand that invoking Hitler in any context is a serious mistake and rightfully upsets people. I strongly condemn the murderous atrocities committed against the Jewish people by Hitler and the Nazis.”

Paladino and Stefanik also brought up comments he made in 2010 denouncing Hitler and the Holocaust, but, as HuffPost Washington Bureau Chief Amanda Terkel tweeted, in that same interview, he also “basically compared gay marriage to the evil of the Holocaust in his list of things ‘we must all be angry about.'”

The full context of Paladino’s comments is quoted above, along with an audio clip. He not only called Hitler “the kind of leader we need today,” but also praised him as “inspirational” and declared “We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it,” as compared to the “politicians we’ve elected” at the local, state, and federal level, whom he derides as showing “RINO-ism” and being “sound asleep.”

Paladino goes on for almost two minutes saying that politicians should be more like Hitler. The words he said are indisputable. He’s the one who brought up Hitler in response to a question about how to get people to take “real action” and get more involved in pushing for “the possibility of change.” He voluntarily invoked Godwin’s Law, and as such, has forfeited the argument.

To be blunt, when rational people mention Hitler, they don’t focus on his watercolor paintings or expansion of Germany’s Autobahn highway system. That’s because the annihilation he oversaw of millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, physically and mentally disabled people, political dissidents, and other innocents was the genocidal turd in the punch bowl of basic human decency.

Nothing else Hitler did matters, because the World War he launched, the Nuremberg Laws he passed, the Endlösung der Judenfrage he sought to implement, are an irredeemable and unremovable stain that dishonors his entire life’s work.

There is simply no context that justifies Paladino’s choice to bring up Hitler as an aspirational example for politicians, especially in light of his past history of incendiary comments, most recently promoting the absurd claim that the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings were false flag operations.