Lawmaker Says By Calling Obama ‘Die Führer’ She Didn’t Mean Hitler
Arizona State Rep. Brenda Barton, who said, “Someone is paying the National Park Service thugs overtime for their efforts to carry out the order of Die Führer,” said she wasn’t referring to Hitler.
Barton initially stood by the post she wrote Monday in which she misspelled the German phrase most commonly associated with Adolf Hitler. However, on Wednesday, Barton issued a statement in order to “clarify that I never used the word or said that President Obama was ‘Hitler.'”
In her statement, Barton said she used the phrase for “emphasis” and not to suggest there is a similarity between the president and Nazis…
“What I did suggest, rather directly, was that the National Park Service enforcement personnel (referring to them as ‘thugs’ for their reported behavior) were simply following orders of ‘their leader’ – and I used the German phrase for emphasis, Der Fuhrer,” Barton said. “I am referencing the Presidents behavior as indicated by his actions. The Merriam-Webster New Collegiate Dictionary defines ‘Fuhrer’ as ‘(2) a leader exercising tyrannical authority.'”
