Trump Compares Jailing Capitol Rioters to WWII Japanese American Internment

Former President Donald Trump on Friday likened people charged with crimes relating to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II.

“Why are they still being held? Nobody’s ever been treated like this,” Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said of the January 6 rioters in an interview with political commentator Dan Bongino. “Maybe the Japanese during the Second World War, frankly. They were held, too.”

Over 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot. Of those charged, over 950 of them have pleaded guilty, and over 200 have been convicted after trial.

Before a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on January 6 in a failed attempt at preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, Trump gave a speech on the White House Ellipse.

The former president has repeatedly pointed to the part of his speech when he told his supporters to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol. But he also told his supporters during the speech, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

The riot, which erupted following false claims from Trump that the 2020 election was stolen from him via widespread voter fraud, left roughly 140 police officers wounded. Rioters also left a trail of destruction in the landmark building, with glass shattered, furniture pushed over, and offices trashed.

Trump has previously referred to rioters still jailed as “hostages” and “victims” and repeatedly called for their release. He even said he’d pardon them if elected in November.

The former president said on Friday he believes the jailed rioters may have been treated as badly as the roughly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, including U.S. citizens, who President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration incarcerated in America following a February 1942 executive order.

“Japanese Americans are not and should not be compared to insurrectionists who committed major crimes and in which people were hurt and killed,” Sharon Yamato, the daughter of former Japanese Americans who were incarcerated, told the Associated Press. “And I think that that is just so horrible to try to even make that comparison or allege that there’s any similarities between the two.”

The Japanese incarcerations were a result of “racial prejudice, war hysteria and failure of political leadership,” a 1983 congressional commission concluded. Five years later, President Ronald Regan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which offered a formal apology for FDR’s executive order and paid $20,000 in reparations to each surviving victim.

This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.