Ocasio-Cortez And Lindsey Graham Have Heated Exchange Over Holocaust Comparison
Ocasio-Cortez at a rally on October 1. Image by Getty Images
Sen. Lindsey Graham clapped back at New York Democratic Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday, after she compared members of the migrant caravan trying to enter the United States to Jews fleeing Germany during the Holocaust.
In a tweet Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez cited Nazi Germany, along with other refugee crises, as an example of how “asking to be considered a refugee & applying for status isn’t a crime.”
The South Carolina senator called her out on what he sees as the irrelevant comparison, suggesting that she “take a tour of the Holocaust Museum in DC.”
I recommend she take a tour of the Holocaust Museum in DC.
Might help her better understand the differences between the Holocaust and the caravan in Tijuana. https://t.co/05vCexiClE
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) November 26, 2018
Ocasio-Cortez responded and stood by her comment, explaining that the “treasured museum” should serve as a lesson to not repeat those horrors in present day.
.@LindseyGrahamSC, the point of such a treasured museum is to bring its lessons to present day.
This administration has jailed children and violated human rights. Perhaps we should stop pretending that authoritarianism + violence is a historical event instead of a growing force. https://t.co/aGJMrPTqNT
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 27, 2018
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
Clarification, November 29, 12:56 p.m.: The third paragraph now includes the words “what he sees as” to make more clear that Senator Lindsey Graham sees the migrant-Holocaust refugee comparison as irrelevant, not the author of the piece.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
