NRATV Compares Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg To Nazi Germany's Secret Police

Grant Stinchfield, the host of the National Rifle Association’s NRATV, compared former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun violence prevention efforts to the work of the Gestapo, the state secret police in Nazi Germany.

During the January 3 broadcast of NRATV, Stinchfield lauded Donald Trump’s election as the National Rifle Association’s “biggest victory,” before cheering that “nearly every candidate supported by Michael Bloomberg and his anti-gun Gestapo lost” (emphasis added):

GRANT STINCHFIELD (NRATV HOST): 2016 actually shaped up pretty well for the Second Amendment -- take a look. In Texas and Ohio, campus carry was victorious, making students and faculty on campus safer in those states on public universities. In Idaho and Mississippi, voters took the Second Amendment word for word and passed a permitless carry bill, making it every law-abiding citizen’s right in those states to carry a firearm without government intrusion. Florida reduced the cost of getting a concealed carry license, and Texas is set to take up similar legislation. In Maine we fought back and beat billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s quest for expanded background checks, and in Kansas, Governor Sam Brownback signed a bill offering protections for public employees to carry firearms while at work. We did suffer some setbacks. Washington and Oregon are planning to join California to establish a “west coast wall” against bogusly named assault weapons. That, after California continued its own assault on the Second Amendment, banning the AR-15 and severely limiting how gun owners can buy ammunition. And with all of that, the members of the NRA can claim their biggest victory with the election of Donald Trump. But remember, nearly every candidate supported by Michael Bloomberg and his anti-gun Gestapo lost. And that, too, is something we can smile about.

Not only does Stinchfield compare Bloomberg, who is Jewish, to a Nazi, but his claim about Bloomberg’s election spending is false. According to Open Secrets, Bloomberg’s Independence USA spent $11,067,492 on federal races where the PAC’s preferred candidate won versus $788,926 on a race where the PAC’s preferred candidate lost. Bloomberg also spent substantial money backing the winners of gubernatorial races in Oregon and North Carolina.

NRATV has served as a pro-Trump attack dog against the media since its launch in October, several weeks before the presidential election. As a rebranding of NRA News, it has the stated mission of providing “the most comprehensive video coverage of Second Amendment issues, events and culture anywhere in the world.” The show’s host, Stinchfield, interjects live hourly updates into a 24-hour video feed featuring archived material and other live programing.

The NRA has a long history of comparing political opponents to Nazis. During a 2013 keynote speech to the National Rifle Association's annual convention, conservative radio host Glenn Beck criticized Michael Bloomberg and showed an image depicting the former New York mayor with his arm raised in a Nazi salute and wearing an armband. Jewish groups condemned Beck, with then-Anti-Defamation League leader Abraham Foxman calling for him to “stop trivializing the history of the Holocaust to score partisan political points.”

In July 2014, NRA lobbyist Brian Judy attacked Seattle businessman Nick Hanauer's support of an expanded background check initiative by emphasizing Hanauer's Jewish background. Calling Hanauer “stupid,” Judy argued that “he's put half-a-million dollars toward this policy, the same policy that led to his family getting run out of Germany by the Nazis.” Members of the NRA’s board of directors have routinely invoked Nazi Germany to attack gun safety efforts.