Bill Nye Appears to Compare Donald Trump's Rise to Hitler's: 'These People Come to Power and Become Tyrants'

Bill Nye the Science Guy subtly slammed President Donald Trump at the Clinton Global Initiative, where he appeared to compare his election victories to Hitler's rise to power.

Before launching into his scathing critique, Nye joked to the audience, "Okay, this is going to end my career. We should be fine. Alright.”

Nye then urged the crowd to remember past examples where leaders took power democratically but shifted toward authoritarianism.

"But keep in mind the stuff that has gone wrong historically. These people come to power and become tyrants and weird because they got voted [in],” he said.

The 70-year-old Nye specifically invoked Hitler to illustrate his point about democratic methods, adding, "Once in a while, there's a military coup or junta or whatever, but Hitler was voted in in a democratic process, and just keep that in mind.”

In 2016, J.D. Vance wrote in a private message to a former college roommate that Trump might be "America's Hitler."

While Nye did not mention Trump by name in that exact snippet, Trump-friendly media outlets like Fox News widely covered the commentary as a pointed shot at the president, fitting into a wider trend of public critiques Nye has leveled against the administration's policies.

Beyond his comments at the Clinton Global Initiative, Nye has consistently criticized Trump, focusing his disapproval primarily on the administration's stance on climate change, science policy and federal budget cuts.

Nye has frequently labeled the Trump administration’s approach to science as "troubling" and "irresponsible."

After the administration proposed a 23 percent cut to NASA's budget, Nye told Variety the proposal was a "huge mistake." He described the budget request as "much lazier," noting it was full of typos, cut-and-paste errors, and misstated years, calling the proposed cuts a "slap in the face" to the scientific community.

In an op-ed and during a speech at the "No Kings" protest in Washington, D.C., Nye warned that cutting $13 billion from NASA would halt dozens of critical missions. He argued that ignoring scientific progress violates the U.S. Constitution (which promotes the progress of science) and risks ceding space leadership to China.

As a prominent climate advocate, Nye has frequently targeted Trump’s environmental policies and climate skepticism.

Nye has openly referred to the Trump administration as an "anti-science movement." When Trump mocked global warming during an intense Midwest cold snap, Nye countered in Rolling Stone that it was deeply dangerous to have "one of the world's top leaders also be one of the world's leading climate deniers.”

After the administration decided to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord and roll back EPA regulations, Nye lamented on MS NOW that the U.S. had "become a pariah" on the world stage instead of a technological leader in clean energy.

Nye has argued that Trump and his officials suffer from "cognitive dissonance" regarding environmental science, choosing a path of "denial, denial, denial" to resolve the conflict between evidence and political convenience.

Despite his dismay with the current administration, Nye remains somewhat optimistic, stating that the "anti-science" sentiment is a temporary phase that the next generation of voters will ultimately outgrow and correct.