Richard Madeley of Good Morning Britain left many, including his co-host Susanna Reid, stunned on Wednesday, as he appeared to liken former Daesh* bride Shamima Begum to a Hitler Youth member.
The presenters of the show had weighed in on the case of Begum, who left the UK together with two other teenage girls to travel to Syria to join Daesh in 2015.
Born to Bangladeshi parents, Begum subsequently married a jihadist and gave birth to three children, who all reportedly died. The former Daesh bride was discovered by journalists in a Syrian camp in February 2019.
Britain's then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked her citizenship on national security grounds. Despite the UK Court of Appeal ruling Begum should be allowed to return to the UK to plead her case, the Home Office appealed to the Supreme Court to reconsider the judgement. In February the latter upheld the ruling to prevent Begum from returning to Britain.
As Shamima Begum has been making headlines by openly regretting the choices she had made when a “dumb kid”, Richard Madeley read out a tweet that had been sent to the GMB show.
“At the age she left, making a mistake is getting a tattoo that you regret, or a one night stand. But deliberately joining a terrorist organisation that loathes and hates the country you come from and all the effort involved in getting there seems to tell a clear story to me,” read the message.
Madeley went on to say that the team had received many messages in the same vein, saying:
“There’s one interesting point I was thinking about last night. Obviously we had the Nuremberg trials after the war and we hanged quite a few Nazis and imprisoned a lot of others, and we let them out, eventually.”
The co-host then quipped:
“As far as I’m aware. We didn’t go after the Hitler Youth, we only went after adults, who had served in the Hitler regime. And that’s just something to reflect on, I think.”
Susanna Reid, who has been lead presenter of the ITV Breakfast programme Good Morning Britain alongside Ben Shephard, and formerly Piers Morgan, appeared gob smacked at the comparison.
Viewers also took to Twitter to weigh in on the unexpected metaphor and share Reid’s disbelief.
Some referenced the comedy character of an inept broadcaster portrayed by English actor Steve Coogan.
Others marvelled at how Reid managed to keep her composure.
Some on social media appeared to agree with Richard Madeley, however.
* Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/“Islamic State”) is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia and other nations