Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, who is seeking the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nomination with Gary Johnson, is standing by a recent comment he made comparing Donald Trump’s immigration plan to Kristallnacht.

Mr. Weld told The New York Times on Thursday that he can “hear the glass crunching on Kristallnacht in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vienna” when he hears that Mr. Trump plans to deport millions of illegal immigrants from the United States.

CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Mr. Weld on the “State of the Union” Sunday whether he thought his words were “a little strong.”

“No, I don’t think so. I served five years on the U.S. Holocaust Commission by appointment of President George W. Bush,” Mr. Weld said. “I’m absolutely certain that, as we said in those years, if we don’t remember, we absolutely will forget.”

“And you got to forget a lot of things to think it’s a good idea to round up and deport 11 million people living peaceably, most of them working in America, in the middle of the night,” he added. “No, not the United States. China, maybe. Not the United States.”

Mr. Weld also stood by his comparison Monday on CNN’s “New Day.”

“It reminds me of Anne Frank hiding in her attic waiting for the Nazi sirens to pass by and evokes the memory — not the memory, I was not alive, but the notion of Kristallnacht,” he said.

Mr. Johnson said Saturday that he wouldn’t have made the Holocaust reference but defended his running mate’s overall sentiment, CNN reported.

“What are we going to do? Are we going to go in these homes and take these people out of their homes? Come on. He made that reference. I don’t make that reference, but it’s crazy. It’s off the charts,” Mr. Johnson said on “CNN Newsroom.”

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