Pa. Rep. Frankel 'horrified' by Pa. lawmaker's Nazi Party comments

State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, said Monday he was “horrified” by State Rep. Chris Dush’s comments comparing the Wolf administration’s efforts to slow the spread of covid-19 with the Nazi Party.

During a committee hearing Monday, Dush, R-Jefferson, expressed his displeasure with what he perceived as Gov. Tom Wolf’s lack of transparency in releasing coronavirus data and information about the state’s business waiver process.

“The press has been having a very difficult time fulfilling its responsibility to the public getting information out because this governor has repeatedly refused all sorts of information,” said Dush at a House State Government Committee hearing.

“More and more I go back to the Democratic National Socialist Party, the Nazi Party, I go to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR. This is a socialist playbook.”

Frankel said Dush’s comments were out of line.

“The Nazi Party and its leaders systematically murdered more than 6 million Jews and many others in an attempt to create a dominate race,” said Frankel in a statement. “Any attempt to muddy that history dishonors all of the innocent lives lost, and it frankly feeds the ugly resurgence of hate-based groups that are actively using covid-19 to foment their message of intolerance throughout the country.”

For his part, Dush later acknowledged that he went too far with his remarks but Frankel wasn’t buying it.

“I appreciate that Representative Dush acknowledged his mistake, but no amount of backpedaling changes the fact that there are very active and dangerous anti-Semitic groups out there that read his comments as encouragement.”