Pollak: Democrats Can't Condemn Antisemitism but Trump Said 'Very Fine People' in Charlottesville
Five months after an antisemitic gunman murdered eleven Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the worst attack on Jews in American history, the Democratic Party is struggling to condemn antisemitism.
House Democrats were to have voted Wednesday on a resolution on antisemitism, after first-year Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) used what Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) called a “vile anti-Semitic slur” to attack pro-Israel colleagues. But even after the resolution was watered down to include anti-Muslim bigotry, some anti-Israel Democrats rejected it.
Now a new resolution is being drafted by Omar’s own committee — one that will reportedly condemn “all hate.”
Democrats cannot bring themselves to offer a simple, straightforward condemnation of the hatred of Jews. Nor can they find the political courage to punish Omar, who has repeatedly used antisemitic rhetoric even after objections from party leaders and intervention by her own constituents.
Yet Democrats continue to remind the American people that President Donald Trump said there were some “very fine people” on both sides in Charlottesville in August 2017.
Democrats, and their media allies, like to pretend Trump was talking about the neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
In fact, as the transcript (rarely quoted) shows, Trump was talking about peaceful protesters who came to Charlottesville to protest, for historical reasons, the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. He was also talking about peaceful left-wing protesters who came to oppose the neo-Nazis.
Moreover, In the same press conference where he used the phrase “very fine people,” he condemned the neo-Nazis and white supremacists several times, and called the murder of counter-protester Heather Heyer an act of terror.
Yet Democrats and the media pretend otherwise.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) claimed falsely on CNN in January that Trump reacted to Heyer’s murder by saying “there were equal sides to this.” CNN’s own Chris Cuomo used a deceptively edited clip of Trump last week to make it appear as though Trump had praised torch-bearing neo-Nazis.
Today, in real time, we see Democrats struggling to condemn the hateful views that those neo-Nazis and white supremacists share with Ilhan Omar. She, like they, believe that American politicians who support Israel are bribed to do so, or that they have sworn “allegiance to a foreign country.” Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke has been praising Omar effusively on Twitter for telling the “truth” about Israel and its supporters.
Has CNN demanded that Omar, or the Democrats, “disavow” David Duke? They barely bring themselves to vote against what Duke believes.
And yet we will continue to hear fake news about Trump and Charlottesville.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.