In an interview with Texas podcaster Jess Fields on Thursday, Scott railed against the economic shutdown imposed by the Republican governor and compared it to Nazi Germany.
“When you have a government telling you that your business is essential or non-essential, yours is non-essential and someone else’s is essential, we have a problem there,” Scott said. “I mean, that’s no different than Nazi Germany where you had government telling people either you were an essential worker or a non-essential worker, and non-essential workers got put on a train.”
Later in the hour-long Zoom interview, Scott urged Little to stop enforcing his shutdown orders and claimed that people have compared the governor to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler over them.
“You can’t take away people’s lives and property without compensation, and that’s exactly what he would be doing. I mean, they are already calling him Little Hitler—Gov. Little Hitler,” the lawmaker said. “I think people will start educating others, and people will be more and more vocal until they will say, ‘Enough of this,’ and put the pressure, hopefully political pressure, on him. That’s what I would hope for.”
Newsweek reached out to the offices of Little and Scott for comment.
Brenda Hammond, president of the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force, which is situated in Scott’s district, condemned the lawmaker’s remarks. “It makes my heart heavy to hear a comment from an elected official that shows such deep disregard and lack of respect for what the Jewish people experienced during the time of the Holocaust,” Hammond said in an email to the Idaho State Journal. “It also shows an extreme ignorance of history.”
Scott’s comments come as an increasing number of anti-lockdown protests have broken out across the U.S. this past week. One day after President Donald Trump shared a series of tweets calling for demonstrators to “LIBERATE” certain states, protesters congregated on streets and outside government buildings on Saturday to call for an end to the COVID-19 restrictions that have been implemented to limit the virus’ spread.
Following the protests, several state governors criticized Trump for his allegedly “dangerous” tweets that encouraged the demonstrations.
Democratic Washington Governor Jay Inslee told ABC’s This Week that the lockdown measures are “designed to protect people’s health, literally their lives,” and Trump has encouraged “insubordination” and “illegal activity.”
