Jewish Emmy winner calls Trump the 'next Hitler'

Leading a roster of TV personalities roasting presidential candidate, ‘Transparent’ director Jill Soloway slams GOP hopeful as ‘complete dangerous monster’

Times of Israel

A comparison between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler by director Jill Soloway injected a brutal sense of reality into Sunday’s otherwise-glittering Emmy Award ceremony in Los Angeles.

Trump is “a complete dangerous monster,” said Soloway, the Jewish creator of Transparent, about a dysfunctional Jewish family based on the story of her own father who came out as transgender.

“Any moment that I have to call Trump out for being an inheritor to Hitler, I will,” she told reporters backstage.

Receiving an award for directing a comedy series, Soloway added that the Holocaust-related story line of the show’s second season was “incredibly timely” given the nature of the presidential campaign. She said Trump’s views on immigration and law enforcement echoed the dynamics that led to Hitler’s rise to power.

“Jews were other-ized in Nazi Germany to gain political power for Hitler, and right now Donald Trump is doing the same thing,” Soloway said.

“He’s other-izing people. He calls women pigs if they don’t look like beauty-pageant contestants; he blames Muslims and Mexicans for our problems; he makes fun of disabled people. This is other-izing with a capital ‘O.’”

Soloway was one of several TV personalities at the awards show to use the opportunity to poke fun of, or excoriate, Trump.

Jeffrey Tambor, who plays a transgender character in the series and scooped the award for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series for the second year running, said he agreed with her comments. The Jewish actor quoted a line from the poet W.H. Auden: “Love one another or die.”

David Mandel, executive producer of the political satire comedy Veep, also weighed in, saying backstage that “there are days when things we think of pale in comparison to that madman threatening Hillary Clinton, not once but twice,” Entertainment reported.

“I find the level of discourse in his campaign to be horrific,” Mandel continued, adding, “It makes comedy way tougher. It’s just so hard when I think there’re a lot of people that don’t want to laugh about this kind of stuff. It makes coming up with ideas and stories that much harder, I think.”

Mandel dedicated Veep‘s award for outstanding comedy series to “chubby Jews from the Upper West Side, embrace who you are,” Entertainment reported.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, accepting her fifth consecutive best actress Emmy for Veep, jokingly lamented that real politics is beginning to resemble the Washington world her comedy series pokes fun at.

“Our show started out as political satire,” she said, “but now it feels like a sober documentary.”

She promised to rebuild the wall between comedy and politics and “make Mexico pay for it.”

Host Jimmy Kimmel pointed out the man in the audience who made Trump a television star.

“Thanks to Mark Burnett, we don’t have to watch reality shows anymore, because we’re living them,” Kimmel said.

Burnett cast Trump in The Apprentice, the hit series that gave him a catchphrase (“You’re fired”) and a larger public profile. Both Kimmel and Burnett — who accepted an award later for another of his shows, The Voice — joked about that series’ stars being future Supreme Court nominees.

It wasn’t much of a surprise to hear that Trump didn’t have many friends in Hollywood. Courtney B. Vance did some politicking after accepting an Emmy for his role in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. ”Obama out,” he said. “Hillary in.”

Aziz Ansari, in a brief routine, referenced some of Trump’s controversial comments about minorities, jokingly suggesting his parents had to be thrown out of the hall.

“America Ferrera,” he said to the actress. “Nice try changing your name to ‘America.’ Out!”

Adding to its slew of Emmy awards in 2015, the cult fantasy TV series Game of Thrones on Sunday took 12 awards in 24 categories.

The show’s Jewish writer and creator — duo David Benioff and Daniel Weiss — also took the Emmy for best writing for a drama series for the episode Battle of the Bastards.