On her podcast this week, Nicolle Wallace sat beside Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker and confidently declared that she didn’t “think any Democrat has” compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler — a remarkable bit of media amnesia from a woman who has made a career of performing moral outrage on television. The clip spread fast because her sweeping denial was so easy to disprove with a single search; reporters and commentators quickly produced the tape that makes her claim look less like a memory lapse and more like selective spin.
The truth is not complicated: leading Democrats and prominent left-wing figures have repeatedly invoked Hitler, Nazism, and fascism when talking about Trump and his policies, and the record is plain for anyone willing to look. Hillary Clinton herself invoked Hitler’s election when warning about authoritarian tendencies, and numerous other officials and media figures have drawn similar comparisons over the years.
What makes Wallace’s denial taste so bitter is that she has been part of the very choir she now pretends never existed. Back in 2018, Wallace lectured viewers about “nationalism” on MSNBC and even quipped that “they cheered at Hitler, too,” invoking the historical comparison she now insists Democrats don’t make. That kind of on-air hyperbole is exactly why conservatives call out media hypocrisy — you cannot piously distance yourself from a tactic you have repeatedly deployed.
Governor Pritzker’s own comments illustrate the larger problem of doublethink: he publicly drew parallels between U.S. immigration enforcement and Nazi tactics, then insisted he had never “suggested Donald Trump is Hitler.” Wallace immediately leapt to defend him by pretending Democrats never make those comparisons, but the tapes and quotes prove otherwise. The comfortable elites in the media circle protect one another with amnesia and talking points while ordinary Americans watch their credibility evaporate.
Conservatives are right to be outraged not because anyone is immune from metaphor — history is a teacher and metaphors exist — but because the media’s selective memory signals a deeper rot: partisan weaponization of the worst horrors in history, deployed when convenient and denied when embarrassing. Pundits like Wallace who play both sides of the moral ledger undermine serious discourse and cheapen real comparisons, all while pretending to be the sober arbiters of truth.
If the left wants to maintain any claim to moral authority, it should stop gaslighting the public and start owning its record. We don’t need another lecture from a cable anchor who forgets her own past sound bites; we need honest journalism and consistent standards that apply to everyone. Hardworking Americans deserve better than the performative outrage and historical arm-waving of Washington’s self-appointed guardians.
