Governor JB Pritzker (D-IL) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that the Trump administration threatened democracy by removing rights and favoring one group of people over another.

Pritzker said, “I am very grateful to be an American and believe very much in protecting all the rights of American, the American people. I also built a Holocaust museum with Holocaust survivors here. And I can tell you that in 1933 and 1934 the German constitutional republic was converted into a dictatorship in a very short period of time. And you know, anybody who walks through a Holocaust museum and sees the chronology can see that. When rights get taken away, when you know people, the services to people are diminished, when all of a sudden we’re favoring one group of people over another that’s a danger that we ought to all pay attention to. I’m seeing that in his country right now. And I needed to speak up. I needed people to hear that. I think that, you know, we’re seeing gradually an understanding that we’ve got to speak up. People need to show up and speak out.”

He added, “You know, you got to remember that the things that I’m speaking out about now about, you know, the threat to our democracy, this is not a message to win elections on. It’s something people need to know. They need to know that that’s happening. But, you know, if you talk to 100 people, knock on 100 doors, and I’ve knocked on an awful lot of doors running for office, and you say to people, you know, democracy is at risk. Nobody knows what that looks like. They’ve never experienced it before.”

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