Massachusetts Senate President Compares Trump to 1930s Nazis

Politicians have said some outlandish things since our nation's founding, but usually the press is there to hold them accountable. That doesn't seem to happen very often anymore, unless the politician's policies are different from those of the media outlets.

Such was the case recently with Massachusetts Senate President Karen Spilka, the 72-year-old Democrat from Ashland who has served the 7th Middlesex District, first in the House and then the Senate, since 2001.

Born in New York City, Spilka moved to Massachusetts in 1975.

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Sen. Spilka, who State House News Service reported "rarely speaks during her chamber's proceedings and almost never attends informal sessions," delivered a 20-minute floor speech in which she warned "America is becoming unrecognizable."

Of course, she was referencing the second Trump Administration, now just more than 100 days old.

Spilka and others in her party and the national mass media have taken political discourse to a new level, and it is getting dangerous, as in someone could get hurt. Trump has already narrowly escaped assassination several times.

Spilka used her speech to link Trump's administration to a time that is so dark, so evil, and so painful to anyone with a memory or connection to it: the Holocaust.

In her speech, Spilka said, "As someone who lost family members in the Holocaust, I do not say this lightly. But what we are experiencing in America today is starting to feel like Europe in the 1930s – and it is not just terrifying, it is enraging."

Boston.com reported that Spilka was addressing Trump's immigration crackdown.

"Like many of you, I watched in horror as the administration has kidnapped residents off the streets, off our streets, right here in Massachusetts," she said.

"I feel the danger of what is happening in America today deep in my bones," Spilka said.

There were six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of non-Jewish victims. Millions of others died leading up to and during World War II.

I get that politics is a tough business, and it's tough to lose, but I don't get why Spilka feels the need to defend the deportation of criminal illegal aliens by drawing comparisons to the Holocaust.

There are no similarities, and no one is being kidnapped off the streets of Massachusetts or elsewhere by ICE.

Spilka's hateful, cynical strategy seeks to further divide our nation while making a mockery of federal immigration law. The people of Massachusetts deserve better.

What is equally troubling is that few, if anyone, in the media questioned Spilka's comparison of the Trump immigration policy to the Holocaust.

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and newly-elected Republican Sen. Kelly Dooner of Taunton joined a standing ovation for Spilka following her remarks to the body.

"I show respect to my colleagues, regardless of whether I agree with the content of the speech. I would expect the same respect from my colleagues for remarks that I make," Dooner told me in a text.

"Unlike what we see at the national level, the State Senate as a body works to maintain decorum among members," Dooner added.