Quite a banner week for Republican New York House hopeful Carl Paladino.
On Thursday, MediaMatters unearthed a local radio interview Paladino gave on Feb. 13 last year in which he cited Nazi ruler Adolf Hitler as a model for a leader who gets the people jazzed about taking action.
The radio host, Peter Hunt, had asked Paladino how to “rouse the population” and “get people thinking about the possibility of change.”
“I was thinking the other day about somebody [who] had mentioned on the radio Adolf Hitler and how he aroused the crowds,” the Republican replied. “And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just — they were hypnotized by him.”
“I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today,” he continued. “We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it, so that it’s not a strange new world to him.”
Paladino’s kudos to Hitler resurfaced about 48 hours after it was discovered that the House candidate — who’s been endorsed by House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) — had posted a conspiracy theory claiming that the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings were false flags on his Facebook page on June 1.
Paladino initially insisted on Wednesday that he hadn’t posted the screed, didn’t know how it ended up on his page and that he didn’t even know how to use Facebook.
But when it was also discovered that Paladino had not only posted the tirade on Facebook but had also emailed it out, the Republican quickly backpedaled and admitted that he had, in fact, posted the rant.
“I didn’t write it but did carelessly republish it without clearly reading it,” he told Spectrum News 1.
Paladino’s Hitler shout-out and the Facebook post are part of the longtime GOP operative’s pattern of unhinged behavior — set on full display when he made a failed bid for New York governor in 2010 and was working for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Lowlights include comparing First Lady Michelle Obama to a gorilla, advocating for throwing welfare recipients in prison, publicly accusing then-rival Gov. Andrew Cuomo of having an affair (despite having a love child of his own) and threatening to “take out” a reporter.
