CNN anchor says she regrets comparing Trump presidency to Nazi’s Night of Broken Glass

‘I regret any pain my statement may have caused,’ says Christiane Amanpour

CNN International anchor Christiane Amanpour says she "regrets" comparing Donald Trump's presidency to Kristallnacht, a Nazi attack on Jews widely regarded as the beginning of the Holocaust.

Ms Amanpour said she had been trying to highlight the outgoing president's repeated attempts to undermine democracy and his assault on the truth, but accepted it was inappropriate to draw parallels between the two periods in history.

“I observed the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, as I often do - it is the event that began the horrors of the Holocaust," Ms Amanpour said at the end of her show on Monday night.

"I also noted president Trump's attacks on history, facts, knowledge, and truth. I should not have juxtaposed the two thoughts," she added.

“Hitler and his evils stand alone, of course, in history. I regret any pain my statement may have caused. My point was to say how democracy can potentially slip away, and how we must always zealously guard our democratic values.”

Ms Amanpour was widely condemned for her comments last week, which David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, described as a "misuse of history".

On 9 November 1938 Nazi SA paramilitaries and some ordinary Germans unleashed a campaign of violence against Jews.  

Across two nights, scores of Jews were killed, hundreds of synagogues burned and thousands of businesses trashed and looted while authorities stood by and watched. Some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps.

The November pogroms became known as the "Night of Broken Glass" due to the shards of broken glass that littered streets in several towns and cities across the country. The violence, orchestrated by Nazi propagandist Joeseph Goebbels, acted as the catalyst for the Holocaust. Some six million Jews were murdered in the genocide.  

“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 proof,” Ms Amanpour said during her 12 November show.

“After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to normal,” she added.

Jewish leaders and the Israeli officials accused Ms Amanpour and CNN of trivialising Kristallnacht and demanded an apology.

Diaspora affairs minister Omer Yankelevitch said the network “should be a partner in the global effort to fight antisemitism and not fuel the fire.”

“Using the memory of the Holocaust for cheap headlines or a political agenda is concerning and distorts the historical and moral truth,” he added.