Florida gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried again compares Gov. DeSantis to Hitler

Recently, Democratic Florida gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried compared current GOP governor of the state Ron DeSantis to a “dictator.”

She went on to double down on her position that the governor’s actions have been comparable to those of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

“What I said, very clearly, was that a lot of the actions that Ron DeSantis has been taking mirror some of the actions that were taken by Hitler on his rise to power,” Fried said during an appearance on WPTV, which is a local television station in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Fried was further pressed about previous statements she has made comparing the governor’s policies to Hitler’s, which included his proposal for a state-level civilian unit of the military. 

When responding to being pushed on those statements, Fried, who is Jewish, said that DeSantis has failed recently to denounce neo-nazis as recent neo-nazi demonstrations have been occurring in the state. However, DeSantis did address the controversy during a press conference in January, arguing that Democrats were using the demonstrations for political gain.

“So what I’m going to say is these people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to do with that, we’re not playing their game,” DeSantis remarked.

Still Fried, who serves as Florida’s agriculture commissioner, has held onto her opposition to DeSantis, going so far as to run against him in the midterms this year. She has openly criticized the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill as censorship.

“He’s spent the last three-and-a-half years taking power, limiting people’s rights to vote, scapegoating communities, taking away women’s rights to make a decision for her own body, making it harder to protest,” she commented to WPTV. Fried is currently the only Democrat elected to public office in the state.