So Bitter! CNN Analyst Sam Vinograd Hears Echoes of Hitler, Putin in Trump CPAC Speech

March 3rd, 2019 3:34 PM

When conservatives hear President Trump talk about conservatives "reclaiming our nation’s priceless heritage," they hear a reference to the Founders and to the founding documents. When CNN hears it, they hear Hitler and Putin. On Saturday afternoon, CNN anchor Ana Cabrera encouraged CNN analyst Samantha Vinograd -- a former Obama aide and current Biden Institute senior adviser -- to slime Trump with a Holocaust brush: 

CABRERA: Sam, the idea of preserving heritage taps into historically darker times, certainly. Not only that, though, you say what we heard from the president and those remarks also could pose a national security concern.

SAMANTHA VINOGRAD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, Ana, his statement makes me sick, on a personal level. Preserving our heritage, reclaiming our heritage, that sounds a lot like a certain leader that killed members of my family and about six million other Jews in the 1940s.

[Vinograd's father Serge is a Holocaust survivor.]

But our national security level, the president talks about preserving our heritage as a catch-all for implementing policies that misallocate resources. He pretends that there are massive flows of illegal immigrants coming over our borders and spending billions of dollars on a border wall emergency instead of paying attention to real national security threats. He sounds a lot like despotic leaders that have talked about white heritage and white nationalism around the world and putting resources in the wrong place and pretending there are foreign people trying to influence our country in a way that just isn't accurate.

CABRERA: Who does that speak to?

VINOGRAD: It speaks to his base. And it also -- by the way, this whole CPAC speech -- how many pieces, parts of President Putin's to-do list was President Trump trying to accomplish today? He denigrated our institutions -- the Department of Justice and the U.S. Congress -- and spread misinformation and conspiracy theories. He undermined the credibility of several of our institutions. He sowed divisions, he sowed confusion, he was speaking to his base. But he was also saying things that really looked like Vladimir Putin scripted his speech. So it helped him perhaps with his base and politically, while at the same time, making Russia's job a lot easier.

Such partisan bitterness! Did we mention Vinograd donated hundreds to Hillary Clinton for President? 

On one hand, a CNN watcher could yawn and say this whole Trump-is-Putin's-poodle line is something Vinograd unloads time and time again. Just look at how CNN promotes these on their YouTube page: 

CNN analyst: It's like Trump's tweet was written by Putin

Analyst: Trump treats Putin as a shadow national security adviser

Vinograd: Trump an asset of the Russian government

Now imagine if CNN and Vinograd thought it would have been fair comment to claim in 2009 -- during the "Russian reset" -- that Obama was an "asset of the Russian government." They would have treated that like it was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. 

Suggesting the mere words "reclaiming our nation's heritage" is somehow a "dog whistle" for Nazism, reminiscent of the Holocaust, is seriously way over the top.