On Thursday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, host Keith Olbermann tried to link John McCain and other opponents of allowing gays to serve openly in the military to anti-gay extremists like the American Family Associations Bryan Fischer, who has claimed that Adolf Hitler and other Nazis were homosexuals. Olbermann: "Why is this former presidential candidate siding with opponents of repealing Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell who now claim it could lead to an all-gay army, an all-gay army like the kind they claimed Hitler had? ... John McCain is marshaling his own resistance to the Senate amendment, inexplicably siding be with right-wing fringe groups who are attempting to out-homophobe each other to prevent historic progress for gay Americans."

But Olbermann also tried to lump more mainstream conservative groups like the Family Research Council in with extremists, and seemed to agree with guest and columnist Dan Savage when he claimed that "Hitler treated gay people the way these right-wing bigots would like to treat gay people":