CNN on Donald Trump: 'Adolf Hitler was elected too'

The US took its time to realise that Donald Trump's presidential bid isn't a laughing matter.

Following the property mogul and Republican frontrunner's idea to shut down mosques after the Paris terror attacks, and the suggestion that Muslims in the US should be required to carry ID papers, people across the political spectrum began to deride Trump's remarks as 'fascist'.

On Wednesday, CNN contributor Sally Kohn also said that “fascism” was the most appropriate term for describing Trump's plan to 'Make America Great Again'.

But then she dropped the H-bomb:

When you have a candidate that continues to say the same sort of demagogic things he’s saying and his support is maintained, and when you see a Black Lives Matter protester beaten during one of his rallies — and he said maybe he deserved to be roughed up — when a homeless immigrant is beaten by Trump supporters and Trump doesn’t condemn that but says, in fact, ‘Well, my people are passionate,’ there’s a word for this. It’s fascism.

And people need to remember in this country, Adolf Hitler, when he first rose to power, was elected by 36 per cent of the German voters.

Host Ashleigh Banfield agreed:

A lot of really weird Brown Shirt similarities... Identity cards, it’s OK to spy on your neighbours, the disabled are already being mocked.

We have to call it what it is.

Kohn is not the first to refer to “fascism” in connection with Trump’s remarks: filmmaker Spike Lee also drew the comparison in an interview with The Daily Beast this week.

During a campaign rally in South Carolina last week Trump was defending himself from allegations that he made up details about Muslims in New Jersey cheering the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11 when he went off track to seemingly imitate a reporter's disability instead.

Trump appeared to imitate the movements of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition affecting the joints.

It's not strictly true that Hitler rose to power through democratic channels: in 1932 the Nazis won 33 per cent of the popular vote in the Weimar Republic, which wasn't enough to form a majority government. Hitler lost the presidential election by a wide margin too.

Fingers crossed.

Watch the full exchange below.

i100.co.uk has contacted Trump for comment.

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