Former Anti-Defamation League National Director Abe Foxman says Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump urged supporters at a Florida rally Saturday to raise their arms in a Nazi salute to him.
"As a Jew who survived the Holocaust, to see an audience of thousands of people raising their hands in what looks like the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute is about as offensive, obnoxious and disgusting as anything I thought I would ever witness in the United States of America," Foxman told
The Times of Israel.
At a campaign rally in Orlando Saturday in the run-up to the Sunshine State's March 15 primary, the real estate billionaire, saying "I've never done this before," had supporters
raise their right hands and pledge to vote for him.
"Can I have a pledge? A swearing? Raise your right hand," Trump said to the audience. Those in the crowd raised their hands and repeated his words.
Foxman was horrified by what he saw, the Times of Israel reports.
"It is a fascist gesture,"Foxman said. "He is smart enough — he always tells us how smart he is — to know the images that this evokes. Instead of asking his audience to pledge allegiance to the United States of America, which in itself would be a little bizarre, he’s asking them to swear allegiance to him.”
"We’ve seen this sort of thing at rallies of neo-Nazis," Foxman, who served as ADL leader from 1987 until his retirement last year, also said. "We’ve seen it at rallies of white supremacists. But to see it at a rally for a legitimate candidate for the presidency of the United States is outrageous.”
"I am a Holocaust survivor and this made me quiver," Foxman told the newspaper.
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