In case you missed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D-NY) latest hot take, the freshman lawmaker accused the Trump administration of running concentration camps on the U.S.-Mexico border, in reference to the detention facilities where asylum seekers are often held.
"And that the fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing," she said in an Instagram Live video. "And we need to do something about it,"
Lawmakers and social media users chastised her for minimizing the cruelty of the Holocaust, but the backlash only emboldened her to double down on her egregious analogy.
Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this. https://t.co/NX5KPPb2Hl
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) June 18, 2019
Fox News anchors didn't hold back either. On "America's Newsroom" Tuesday morning, Bill Hemmer asked Ocasio-Cortez a series of questions to determine whether she had any authority to make such a comparison.
Bill Hemmer GOES OFF on AOC's "concentration camps" comment:
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) June 18, 2019
"She used the extermination of 6 million people... 'Never again' is the phrase that Jews use all over the world to make sure that the extermination between 1939 and 1945 never happens again." pic.twitter.com/LeiMrahO9v
"Has she ever been to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem?" Hemmer asked his guest, Art Del Cueto, the VP of the National Border Patrol Council, during a segment on her remarks. "Or Auschwitz, Birkenau, and southern Poland? Or Dakau in Germany?"
Hemmer had one final question:
"Does she not owe every Jew on the planet an apology?"
I had the honor of walking through the Yad Vashem museum during a trip abroad in 2016. I and several of the fellow tourists in my group failed to make it through the building dry-eyed. I'm sure countless others can report similar experiences, for the atrocities committed against the Jewish people are not to be compared.