Music Legend Linda Ronstadt Likens Donald Trump to Hitler: ‘If You Read the History, You Won’t Be Surprised’

Musician Linda Ronstadt is one of many celebrities who is less than fond of Donald Trump, sharing her thoughts on the current president during an interview with Anderson Cooper, part of which aired Monday night on Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN. Speaking to Cooper, Ronstadt compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, explaining that she saw “great parallels” between the current United States president and the Weimar Republic, the German government that eventually gave rise to the Nazi Party.

“As Hitler rose to power there were a lot of chances to stop him and they didn’t speak out,” she said. “And the industrial complex thought that they could control him once they got him in office and, of course, he was not controllable. And by the time he got established, he put his own people in place and stacked the courts and did what he had to do to consolidate his power.”

Cooper replied that he thinks “a lot of people would be surprised to hear comparisons between what happened then and now,” but Ronstadt said that in her opinion, the two situations are not so different.

“If you read the history, you won’t be surprised,” she said. “It’s exactly the same. Find a common enemy for everybody to hate. I was sure that Trump was gonna get elected the day he announced, and I said it’s gonna be like Hitler and the Mexicans are the new Jews. And sure enough, that’s what he delivered.”

The Grammy winner also explained how the current political climate has affected her family.

“It’s a strain on my family relations because some of my family in Tucson are Republicans, and instead of talking about that, we sing together. We’d have a great time,” she said. “Now I have to be careful because we’ve had so much taken away from us by this administration, I’m not willing to let him take my family relationships away. My family, the parts that were Republican were fairly rational Republicans. We don’t have that in our current White House.”

On New Year’s Day, CNN aired a CNN Films documentary of Ronstadt, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, which documented the 73-year-old’s life from her childhood in Tuscon to her rise to musical stardom to the illness that ultimately led her to end her career. Ronstadt suffers from the degenerative condition progressive supranuclear palsy and retired in 2011.

Photo Credit: Getty / Michael Kovac