“To allow anybody to discredit the press, discredit the military, to discredit our leadership in — both in the Congress and outside — we are asking for dire consequences,” House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn said Tuesday. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Congress Clyburn: Trump and his family are ‘greatest threats to democracy of my lifetime’

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn invoked the regime of Adolf Hitler to warn about the presidency of Donald Trump, urging Congress to push back on a president whom he said he considers one of “the greatest threats to democracy of my lifetime.”

The South Carolina Democrat told NBC News on Tuesday that, though he’d never lived through a political climate as toxic as the current one, he’d studied ones like it.


“Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany. And he went about the business of discrediting institutions to the point that people bought into his stuff,” he said, arguing later that Hitler’s shift from chancellor to dictator is an often overlooked part of history.

“Nobody would have believed it now. But swastikas hung in churches throughout Germany. We had better be very careful,” Clyburn said.

The third-ranking House Democrat appeared to draw a loose comparison between Trump’s erosion of norms as president in office to Hitler’s rule in Germany, warning that both chambers of Congress should be prepared to stand up to the president if necessary.

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“To allow anybody to discredit the press, discredit the military, to discredit our leadership in — both in the Congress and outside — we are asking for dire consequences and I think it’s time for the Congress, House and Senate, to grow spines and do what is necessary to protect this democracy,” he said. “This man and his family are the greatest threats to democracy of my lifetime.”

Clyburn also broke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on the issue of impeachment, suggesting that the issue of impeaching Trump is less of a reach than the speaker has presented it to be and doesn’t necessarily require complete bipartisan support in Congress.

“I think all of us know that impeachment is a political concept,” he conceded. But, he predicted, “if the committees do their work properly, they will be able to bring the public along with them. They will be able to set the tone for impeachment if that is deserved.”