Second Knight Doug Emhoff was slammed online Wednesday for comparing the rhetoric of parents who spoke out against the school’s political ideology at school board meetings to the Nazis’ hatred of the Holocaust.
In a discussion with Symone Sanders, a former spokeswoman for Emhoff’s wife Kamala Harris, the second gentleman shared that he met a Ukrainian war refugee who lived in Berlin and survived the Ukrainian Holocaust.
“We have to help (refugees). I met a woman in Germany who survived the Holocaust, she settled in Ukraine, and now she is a refugee again in Berlin, she left as a Jew in the Holocaust,” said Emhoff.
“Hate is intertwined. You see it in the discourse of the country right now,” he continued. “You see it in the divisions we have. Just going to school meetings, you see that hate that’s there.”
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Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff. (Sarahbeth Maney/New York Times via AP, Pool)
“We have to step up and speak. And we have to call out the cowards there,” he added.
Emhoff’s comparison did not sit well with online commentators.
“WOW. Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, compares the hatred that fueled the Holocaust to the frustration of parents speaking out at school board meetings,” said Nicky Neily, president of Parents Defending Education.
“Biden Admin’s vitriol for parental involvement in education knows no bounds,” Neily continued.
“Oy bey. There’s something physically intimidating about this guy when he talks,” wrote City Hall columnist Derek Hunter.
“It’s always easier to compare your political opponents to Nazis than to engage in debate,” The Giraffe podcast wrote online.
Other Twitter users were more blunt with their thoughts.
Last November, Assistant House Democratic Leader James Clyburn, D.C., advocated and repeated a comparison of the current state of the United States to Germany in the years before the rise of Adolph Hitler.
In a “Fox News Sunday” interview, anchor Shannon Bream offered the Democratic leader the opportunity to reflect that the U.S. is “on the verge of repeating what happened in Germany,” and Clyburn stood by her stance.
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“The facts are very clear,” he said. “All my life I’ve studied history. I’ve taught history. And I’m telling you, what I see here is a parallel to history in Germany, in Italy, in the 1930s in this world.”
When asked if not voting for Democrats in the midterm elections meant supporting something akin to the rise of Hitler, Clyburn clarified that the comparison would not be to voting for any non-Democrat, only “election deniers” and “liars.”
Fox News Digital’s Ronn Blitzer contributed reporting.
Houston Keene is a political writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Houston.Keene@Fox.com and on Twitter: @HoustonKeene