Veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour apologized Monday for drawing a comparison between the actions of the Nazi regime during an infamous 1938 pogrom against Jews and Donald Trump's presidency.
Amanpour sparked outrage in last Thursday's show when she said: “This week 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened. 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.”
Her comments elicited widespread condemnation, including a demand from the State of Israel for a retraction. The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said that the comparison was highly inappropriate and untruthful.
On Monday, Amanpour walked back her remarks.
"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 said.
"I should not have juxtaposed the two thoughts. Hitler and his evil stand alone, of course, in history," she said. "I regret any pain my statement may have caused."
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Jewish-owned shops in Berlin vandalized during the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938
(Photo: Getty Images)
According to the Jewish News Syndicate, Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich sent a letter to CNN president Jeffrey Zucker in the wake of the comments, demanding that Amanpour make an “immediate and public apology” for what he called an “unacceptable comparison.”
Yankelevich wrote: “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."