Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is believed to be eying a 2028 presidential run, faced heavy fact-checking Monday after denying that he had ever called Republicans “Nazis.”
Pressed by reporters at a press conference about his past remarks, the Democratic governor strongly rejected the claim that he had used the term.
“That is completely false. I have never called Republicans ‘Nazis,’” Pritzker exclaimed Monday after going on a tirade claiming that it is Donald Trump, not Democrats, who is “actively fanning the flames of division.”
However, records show Pritzker has repeatedly compared Republicans and former President Donald Trump to Nazis. In his February State of the State address, he likened Trump and his administration to Hitler’s regime.
“The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems. If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this: It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic,” he said during the address.
Earlier this year, Pritzker told CNN’s The Lead that actions by the Trump administration resembled the early period when Adolf Hitler rose from German chancellor to Nazi dictator.
“We’re talking about the death of a constitutional republic,” he told CNN. “That’s what happened in Germany in 1933, 1934 and we’re seeing today that you’ve got an administration in Washington that’s ignoring court orders, literally ignoring when a judge says, ‘You can’t do this.’”
Pritzker later drew parallels between the current U.S. political climate and the Holocaust. In a separate interview with NPR, he appeared to suggest that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) represented the “tip of the spear” of Nazism in America.
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JB Pritzker: I never called them Nazis
Also JB Pritzker: OK, so maybe I called Trump Hitler and Republicans nazis on a dozen occasions…pic.twitter.com/28MLpXvaec
— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) September 15, 2025
“How do you prove to somebody that you’re a U.S. citizen? Your accent? The color of your skin?” Pritzker said in his reply about ICE tactics. “That’s not the country we live in. You know, you shouldn’t have to walk around with papers, the way that they did in the early days of Nazi Germany, to prove that you belong and that you’re not one of them.”
Pritzker, who travels with a security detail, has also urged his supporters to confront Republicans directly. In April, he told Democrats to ensure that “Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.”
“It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once,” he told the group of Democratic activists in New Hampshire. “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.”
