Recently, an NPR listener was stunned to hear Mike Huckabee, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, suggest on All Things Considered that the Oct. 7 Hamas attack was in some ways worse than the Holocaust.
The reporter doing the interview told me he was surprised as well. But he didn't push back on that particular point because of time pressures, which I examine below.
Some NPR listeners are keen to notice moments like this, when a journalist accepts the language of the presidential administration, rather than challenging it during the interview.
Several listeners have shared their frustration at hearing charges of antisemitism equated with criticism of the Israeli government's attacks on Gaza and its treatment of Palestinians. Rachel Fain is one such listener. She wrote on May 23, "I am worried about the way antisemitism is being conflated with protest against the Israeli government."
In a similar vein, several listeners object to calling the budget bill currently before Congress the "Big Beautiful Bill," which is the official name President Donald Trump gave to the legislation. Kate Cunningham wrote on May 15, "I regularly listen to ATC and other news programs, daily. Today I have heard reference to President Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' at least six times! Calling it that makes your reporting sound like a PSA FOR Trump's budget bill."
In each of these examples, the audience is asking NPR to avoid amplifying distortions that warp the truth. It's a reasonable request. And there are myriad tools journalists can use to make the news more useful to the audience than the political sources they interview. These tools range from simply placing quote marks around "Big Beautiful Bill" to signify that this is somebody's language, to listening closely during an interview and pushing back on distortions, to inserting clarifying language into a news story that points out the falsehoods.
NPR journalists do all of this and more, most of the time.
For the issues that come up over and over again, like painting antisemitism with too broad of a brush or referencing the "Big Beautiful Bill," NPR journalists must be vigilant in pointing out the administration's habit of using vague language and spin to advance their agenda.
Knowing when to push back and how much to push back in an interview is a tougher call. Below we explore the Huckabee interview with the reporter who conducted it, as well as with a Holocaust historian.
We also spotlight an NPR investigation that explains how so many ideas espoused by an Australian influencer end up embraced and amplified by President Trump. — Kelly McBride
When Mike Huckabee compared Oct. 7 to the Holocaust, here's how the reporter chose to respond
Tom McGrane wrote on May 23: Huckabee said that Oct 7 was worse (more malicious) than the Holocaust. The reporter just moved on without questioning him. And that comment isn't in the web story. I thought there would be follow up the next day, esp. since there was an interview with a former ambassador.Nope. The whole comment seems to have been buried and forgotten when it should be a major headline around the world.Oct 7th was horrible, but worse than 7 million dead? Justification for 50,000 dead and starving an entire population?
NPR Jerusalem Correspondent Daniel Estrin requested an interview with Huckabee shortly after the incoming U.S. Ambassador to Israel arrived at his new post. The ambassador's office said yes, but scheduled a date that was a month away.
As the date approached, so did a lot of news. Ceasefire negotiations were underway. Israel intensified its military offensive in Gaza. Some news outlets reported that Trump was getting frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And three U.S. allies, France, Canada and England, issued a joint statement condemning Israel's recent offensive in Gaza as well as its new plan to allow a bare minimum of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Huckabee's staff told Estrin ahead of time that he would have 12 minutes to conduct the interview. When the appointed date finally arrived, Estrin interviewed Huckabee inside the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.
"His spokesman stood at the side and flagged me when we had like two minutes left," Estrin told me. "There was another media crew from an Israeli outlet waiting in another room, ready to set up right after us."
A condensed version of the interview ran May 21 on All Things Considered and the full interview ran that same day on the State of the World podcast.
"The interview was very much a balance of really trying to drill down on the main point, which was that he was defending Israel's renewed and intensified offensive in Gaza, at this time when so many top allies of the U.S. and Israel were coming out with unprecedented criticism," Estrin said. "So I felt like, yes, I only had 12 minutes, but I needed to press that."
Estrin started by asking about the ceasefire talks, and Huckabee responded by blaming Hamas for the lack of progress. Estrin asked about the reported rift between Trump and Netanyahu, which Huckabee shot down.
Then Estrin asked about the statement from France, England and Canada demanding that the attacks on Gaza stop. "Does the U.S. believe that this new offensive must stop?" Estrin asked.
Huckabee replied:
I think we recognize the sovereignty of Israel. Israel had people murdered in the most vicious, horrible way that we’ve seen, and, I wanted to say, since the Holocaust. But in all candor, as awful as the crimes were in the Holocaust, they weren’t worse. And in some cases, they weren’t as malicious. It was not about just intentionally inflicting a level of mutilation, massacre and humiliation on the victims. And then they chose victims for the highest level of pain and suffering to their families. Raping women in front of their children, cutting off the heads of babies, putting babies in ovens, viciously mutilating elderly people while they sat in a wheelchair. That’s uncivilized behavior. That’s not just attacking people, it’s attacking civilians. That’s not collateral damage. That’s the intentional harm going to the most vulnerable and then worse, if anything could be worse, videotaping their actions and being proud of it.
Estrin told me that he was surprised to hear this from Huckabee and that he'd never heard anyone argue that Oct. 7 was worse than the Holocaust. "Many have compared Oct. 7 to the Holocaust. I have not heard a claim by Israeli or U.S. officials, until that interview, that there were some instances on Oct. 7 that were worse."
In addition to the Holocaust claims, Estrin knew that numerous reports had debunked the claims of babies being beheaded on Oct. 7. (In the State of the World podcast, host Greg Dixon breaks in immediately after Huckabee makes the statement to alert the listener that the claim has been debunked. On ATC, Estrin pointed out that Huckabee was relying on unsubstantiated claims.)
But in the moment, Estrin and Huckabee were four to five minutes into the interview, and Estrin had three possible pathways to steer the conversation. He could have asked Huckabee to say more about his conclusion that Oct. 7 was in ways more vicious than the Holocaust. He could have challenged the ambassador for repeating a claim that had been disproven. Or, he could have pushed back on the original question and gotten Huckabee to offer more of a response to Israel's many critics. With eight minutes left on the clock, he had to make a call.
"There were many parts of the interview I wanted to follow up on in the moment, including the Holocaust comparison," Estrin said. "The time constraints were tight, there were a lot of topics I needed to cover and by design it wasn't a live interview, so I knew I'd be able to provide context and fact-checking when we aired the interview." So, he chose the third option, asking five follow up questions, all designed to press Huckabee's argument that criticism of Israel is unwarranted.
Huckabee presented the U.S. as completely aligned with Israel's choices. At every opportunity, he told Estrin the U.S. supported Israel and respected its choices.
By then, eight minutes of the interview had elapsed, and Estrin was looking at the list of questions that he still wanted to get to, which included an exploration of the internationally condemned U.S.-backed plan to take over distribution of aid in Gaza, a plan that continues to result in violence and very little food being handed out. Given the pressing nature of that storyline, he stuck with his questions.
Estrin reached out to the embassy after the interview to ask if Huckabee wanted to further explain or revise his statements about the Holocaust. An embassy staffer replied saying they had nothing to add.
I reached out to a Holocaust historian to ask what he thought was important. He said he wished that Estrin had taken a minute or two and asked Huckabee what he meant by the Holocaust comparison.
Every example that Huckabee lists as an example of Hamas' "uncivilized behavior" happened in the Holocaust, too, Waitman Wade Beorn told me. Beorn is an historian at Northumbria University in England. The former West Point graduate and Iraq War veteran recently published a book on the Janowska concentration camp in Lviv, Ukraine, and is currently building a three-dimensional model of the camp.
Qualitatively, he said, both the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and the Holocaust were barbaric and cruel. But quantitatively, Beorn pointed out, the Nazis killed 6 million Jews, 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, 1.8 million Poles, 250,000 people with disabilities and many more citizens across Europe.
"Women being raped in front of other people, male prisoners being forced to rape female prisoners in front of other people, women jumping into flaming pits with their babies while still alive, people being tied to posts and having various body parts shot at until they die, I could go on and on," he said. "So this idea that (Oct. 7) was more barbaric than the Nazis doesn't hold historical water."
It's important for journalists to push back on comparative statements for two reasons, Beorn said. First, he said, an interviewer should set the historical record straight and try to determine if the ambassador to Israel is misinformed, which would certainly be a news story.
But it's even more important to explore the reasons behind the rhetoric. "What does it mean to us if something is worse than the Nazis? What does that imply we can or should do?" Beorn asked. "I don't like to see the Nazis civilized or apologized for. But I think it's important, when people are using rhetoric like this, to find out why. Because there's clearly a reason."
Looking over the interview, I understand why Estrin chose not to pursue the line of questioning right there in the moment. He wasn't prepared to do so, while he was prepared to ask other important questions.
Still, it needs to be done, and it's not too late. Should Huckabee or others in the Trump administration repeat the suggestion that the Nazis were more civilized than Hamas, journalists should press them to reveal their motives for making the false comparison.
Journalists should be prepared to ask any official who makes such a claim to explicitly state their point. Are they encouraging us to rethink whether the Nazis were so bad? Are they suggesting that if Hamas is worse than the Nazis, that we should move the boundaries of what's legally acceptable in response? Are they suggesting that something like the bombing of civilian areas of Germany, which was not necessarily seen as awful when it happened, would not be viewed in this modern moment as awful?
"If we say the Holocaust is the worst thing that's ever happened in human history, then we say something is worse than that, what does that suggest that we're allowed to do to stop it?" Beorn asked. "It's dangerous territory." — Kelly McBride
How a news influencer is capitalizing on clout
Of all the X users Elon Musk engages with publicly, one rises to the top: Mario Nawfal. NPR reporter Huo Jingnan detailed the Australian crypto entrepreneur's far-reaching influence, how he's capitalizing on it, and its possible implications. She found that between August of 2024 and early April, Musk interacted with Nawfal on X at least 1,200 times. And since Musk became an advisor to President Donald Trump, Nawfal's social media posts have found their way into Trump's feed via the tech billionaire. Nawfal has interviewed foreign leaders on his personal podcast and tends not to push back against their claims as some viewers would expect, and his team doesn't vet posts for accuracy. His approach to news appears to subvert traditional journalistic ethics as we know it. Jingnan's deep reporting adds a worthy thread to conversations we're having in this fractured and messy information environment. — Amaris Castillo
The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.
Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute
Copyright 2025 NPR
