Yesterday saw two famous Trump-haters eschewing Hitler in finding murderous tyrants with whom to compare President Trump.  J. Marsolo notes elsewhere on these pages that just prior to the release of President Trump's Fake News Awards, Republican Senator Jeff Flake described President Trump's criticism of media reporting as similar to Stalin's practice of imprisoning and executing critics of his regime because Trump once employed the words "enemy of the people" to describe fake news media.  I guess that Flake is unaware of Henrik Ibsen, the world-famous Norwegian playwright who popularized the expression in the late nineteenth century.

After Republican Flake opened the door to murderous dictator comparisons, Paul Begala, the CNN commentator and former top aide and propagandist for Bill Clinton (and a veteran impeachment-fighter) jumped in, not only seconding the Stalin comparison, but adding more dictators, none of whom were named Hitler, or even Schicklgruber.

Alex Griswold reports in the Free Beacon:

"When you compare our president, my president, to Joseph Stalin, to Rodrigo Duterte, the dictator in the Philippines, to Bashar Assad, the dictator in Syria, that's extraordinary," Begala said.

"Do you think that's a fair comparison?" host Brianna Keilar asked.

"In the sense that they lie?  Yes!  He is a liar," Begala responded.

"They're known for other things too, Paul.  Let's be clear," Keilar pointed out.

But the former Clinton advis[e]r insisted that Trump [attacks not just] the press, but also the CIA, the FBI, members of the judiciary, and anyone who opposes him.

"He attacks any check on his power, because he would like to be like Duterte, Assad, Putin, Stalin," he insisted.  "That's his goal; he's an autocrat."

Are the Trump-haters starting to realize that invoking Hitler just makes them look ridiculous?  Did the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital make that claim so patently absurd that they have given up the ghost?

If Stalin is going to be the default boogeyman, where does that leave all the accolades for communism claimed by progressives all these years?  Last year, the New York Times ran an extended series of articles commemorating a century of communism and informed its readers that sex was much better under the dictatorship of the proletariat.  The thought that Trump might usher in an era of better sex would be enough to make progressive heads explode.

Keep digging that hole, Trump-haters.