Minnesota Republican candidate for governor Scott Jensen continues to stir controversy over recent comments likening mask mandates to measures in Nazi Germany, defending those remarks twice this week and drawing criticism from Democratic elected officials and some Jewish groups.
The comments, made to an anti-COVID mandate group in April and posted on Twitter this week by online media hub TC Jewfolk, are the latest from the physician and former state senator who rose to prominence in the party over his opposition to lockdown measures meant to slow the spread of the pandemic. But the remarks quickly drew criticism over his comparison of pandemic mandates such as masking to actions taken by Nazi Germany in the 1930s that helped Adolf Hitler rise to power.
"The little things grew into something bigger. Then there was a night called Kristallnacht, the night of the breaking glass," Jensen said at an event with the group Mask Off Minnesota. "Then there was the book burning, and it kept growing and growing, and a guy named Hitler kept growing in power. … In a way, I think that's why you're here today, is you sense that something is happening, and it's growing little by little."
Jensen doubled down on those comments in a video posted to Facebook on Tuesday and again at an event with the Republican Jewish Coalition, according to audio obtained by the DFL Party and provided to the Star Tribune. A reporter for the Star Tribune was told the event was closed to the press.
In the video posted on Facebook Tuesday, Jensen said he doesn't believe he was being insensitive about the Holocaust when he talked about "incremental change designed by government to effect sweeping societal changes."
"I think it's a legitimate comparison," he said, adding, "You don't get to be my thought police person."
Later in the evening, at the Jewish GOP event with other Republican statewide candidates for office, Jensen echoed those comparisons and said Democrats were trying to "demonize" him and distract voters from their party's record on issues such as crime and the economy.
"What's happened over the last two and a half years has parallels to what happened with the 1933 banning of books, banning of Jewish authors, burning of books, Kristallnacht in 1938," he said. "This was a sequence of events that should never have been happening. It should never have been turned away from. It should have been elevated, but the media wasn't there, and we're seeing the same thing in America today."
