Former President Donald Trump once again claimed Friday that his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were being treated unfairly by the federal justice system.
But this time, he offered a deeply flawed historical analogy: Trump claimed the insurrectionists are being treated like Japanese Americans during World War II who were forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated in isolated regions of the country.
“Why are they still being held?” Trump asked during an appearance on right-wing pundit Dan Bongino’s show on Rumble, a far-right video platform.
“Nobody’s ever been treated like this. Maybe the Japanese during the Second World War, frankly, they were held, too,” Trump said.
Unlike the Jan. 6 defendants, the Japanese Americans imprisoned during World War II were not charged with any crimes. Rather, they were held under the guise of national security after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
The wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans in the camps —…