During an appearance on Fox & Friends, the conservative television host discussed Parler’s recent deplatforming. “Well, look, they gave us a taste of this preelection when they suppressed the Hunter Biden story,” Pirro said.
Here, she seemed to reference Twitter’s and Facebook’s decisions to restrict further dissemination of an October New York Post report, which claimed to detail email correspondence between President-elect Joe Biden’s son and a Ukrainian business partner in 2015. Both companies regulated how users could share the article on their respective platforms, citing fact-checking concerns and doxing policies. The Post’s article was met with widespread skepticism, and many questioned the accuracy of its reporting.
“And now that they’ve won, what we’re seeing is a kind of censorship that is akin to a Kristallnacht, where they decide what we can communicate about,” Pirro continued, drawing a comparison between Parler’s shutdown and the Nazis’ attack on Jewish persons and property on November 9 to 10, 1938.
Kristallnacht, which translates as “the Night of Broken Glass,” targeted Jewish residences and establishments throughout Germany, Austria and German-occupied portions of the former Czechoslovakia. Jewish businesses, homes, schools, hospitals and synagogues were defaced or demolished, and at least 91 people were killed.
Pirro condemned the rioters in televised remarks on Saturday, calling their actions “deplorable, reprehensible [and] outright criminal.”
After her Fox & Friends comments on Monday morning garnered criticism online, Pirro addressed the appearance in a statement shared to Twitter later that afternoon.
“Although book burning started earlier, Kristallnacht included the destruction of Jewish stores, homes & synagogues containing rare Jewish books & Torahs. My reference was in context of books,” she wrote. “The Holocaust was the greatest hate crime the world ever tolerated. I abhor all violence.”
Fox News deferred to Pirro’s statement on Twitter in response to Newsweek’s request for comment.
This story was updated at 1:39 p.m. to include Fox News’ response to Newsweek’s request for comment and at 5:49 p.m. to include Jeanine Pirro’s tweet on Monday afternoon.
This story was updated on Tuesday, January 12, at 2:07 p.m. ET to note that Fox News referenced Pirro’s tweet in a subsequent response to Newsweek after it initially declined to comment.
