CNN veteran anchorwoman Christiane Amanpour apologized during her Monday show for comments equating the events of Kristallnacht with US President Donald Trump's presidency.
Her exposition caused a storm of controversy, including a demand from Israel to issue a retraction.
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"I observed the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, as I often do. It is the event that began the horrors of the Holocaust. I also noted President Trump's attacks on history, facts, knowledge, and truth," Amanpour explained.
"I should not have juxtaposed the two thoughts. Hitler and his evil stand alone, of course, in history," she added. "I regret any pain my statement may have caused."
She added: "My point was to say how democracy can potentially slip away, and how we must always zealously guard our democratic values."
In the opening segment of her regular daily affairs program on Thursday, Amanpour spoke of the anniversary of Kristallnacht – the pogrom attack on Jews in Germany and Austria in early November 1938 – and how the Nazis upended human civilization, which led to genocide.
She warned that Trump's criticism of the media and his legal efforts to contest the recent election was similar to the Nazi attacks on intellectuals and Jews during that event in 1938.
"This week 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened," Amanpour said in the Thursday monologue. "It was the Nazis' warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity, and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth. After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth."
Amanpour was heavily criticized for drawing this comparison, leading to calls for her removal by both Jews and non-Jews who were shocked at the ease at which one would compare Nazi Germany to what has been widely considered to be a very pro-Israel administration in Washington.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich sent a letter to CNN president Jeffrey Zucker on Sunday, demanding Amanpour issue an "immediate and public apology" for the "unacceptable comparison."
"We find hereby the false equivalence made between the actions of a sitting US president and the atrocities of the Kristallnacht pogroms which were carried out by the Nazis 82 years ago belittling of the immense tragedy of the Holocaust," Yankelevich wrote.
Following the anchorwoman's comments, Ben Habib, a former European Parliament member for the Brexit Party in Britain, said on Twitter: "This is @camanpour on @CNN comparing Trump's tenure to Nazi Germany. How the hell is this sort of prejudice tolerated on mainstream media? Third-rate rubbish."
The Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, an organization that defends Jewish interests wrote on Twitter: "Despicable. @camanpour compares verbal fact-checking of a POTUS to a Nazi pogrom in which dozens of Jews were murdered," the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, a small group representing Haredi Jewish interests, wrote on Twitter.
CNN has clashed with the Trump administration repeatedly over the past four years due to the latter's criticism that the network's coverage is biased against him.
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