New York City Councilwoman Vicki Paladino, 67, elected to her first term in November, is apologizing for comments she made to NY1 in an interview that aired Monday in which she said “I don’t need to show you my papers. This isn’t Nazi Germany,” over her being locked out of the city council chambers for refusing to say whether or not she’s vaccinated for COVID-19.
“During an hours-long interview with a reporter in which I spoke passionately about many issues, I made an ill-considered and inappropriate comparison between our government’s vaccine mandates and Nazi Germany. Though I immediately regretted what I said, and even asked the reporter to strike it from the record, I take complete ownership of that mistake” wrote Paladino in a statement.
Nice of her to apologize, because her history suggests she doesn’t think Nazi Germany was necessarily a bad thing. During her ultimately failed 2018 New York State Senate campaign, Gothamist reported that her since deleted old Twitter account regularly retweeted white supremacist and anti-semitic accounts, and liked a tweet saying elected officials should “stop catering to Asians” (supposedly an accident, per Gothamist). In 2017, when Black author Mikki Kendall tweeted “Your American Dream was built on the bones & blood of my ancestors. Want that dream to be reality? Time to pay the toll. We all get free,” Paladino replied with “Nothing was preventing your ancestors from building ships and conquering Europe. Except for their technological inferiority of course.” Vicki’s son Thomas Paladino Jr, 44, is a Proud Boys member who served as her “campaign strategist” during the 2018 run as well, using his Gab account to solicit donations in between also threatening to kill Maxine Waters and calling Africans “savages”.