AOC Says Trump Using 'Deliberate, Atrocious, Targeted' Anti-Semitism Against Adam Schiff
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York once again attacked President Donald Trump this week for supposedly bigoted rhetoric.
The controversial freshman representative went all out Saturday on Twitter, accusing Trump of “deliberate, atrocious, targeted antisemitism” toward House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff of California.
“Understand that Trump is engaged in deliberate, atrocious, targeted antisemitism towards Chairman Schiff,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
“Then ask yourself why no one cares to denounce it,” she added. “[Especially] when his accusation of it towards others drove full news cycles earlier this year.”
Understand that Trump is engaged in deliberate, atrocious, targeted antisemitism towards Chairman Schiff.
Then ask yourself why no one cares to denounce it – esp when his accusation of it towards others drove full news cycles earlier this year. https://t.co/bjEw6eb7Md
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 5, 2019
Linked to the tweet as evidence was an article from self-described “adversarial” news publication The Intercept.
The article was not-so-subtly titled, “Fighting Calls for Impeachment, Trump Intensifies Anti-Semitic Rhetoric. We Cannot Ignore It.”
In it, writer Mehdi Hasan made the case that Trump — proud father to Jewish convert Ivanka Trump and equally Jewish husband Jared Kushner — is a staunch anti-Semite.
As evidence, Hasan cited little more than Trump’s reference to Schiff and House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, both of whom are key cogs in the Democratic effort to impeach him, as “Do Nothing Democrat Savages” on Twitter last month.
Trump, meanwhile, also listed Ocasio-Cortez, her so-called “squad” of freshmen progressive legislators and just about every other pro-impeachment Democrat by using the catch-all term “and many more” in the tweet in question.
Can you imagine if these Do Nothing Democrat Savages, people like Nadler, Schiff, AOC Plus 3, and many more, had a Republican Party who would have done to Obama what the Do Nothings are doing to me. Oh well, maybe next time!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 28, 2019
“How is such rhetoric not racist?” Hasan wrote.
“On October 2, Trump escalated his brazenly anti-Semitic attack on Schiff. ‘We don’t call him “Shifty Schiff” for nothing,’ the president told reporters in the Oval Office. ‘He’s a shifty, dishonest guy,'” the writer recounted.
“The stereotype of Jews as ‘shifty,’ the suggestion that they are sneaky and manipulative, has a long and ignominious history,” Hasan wrote.
Trump’s remarks came after Schiff was caught making up quotes from Trump just last week on Capitol Hill.
“Anti-Semitic rhetoric — of all types but especially of the Trumpian variety — puts Jewish lives in very real danger,” Hasan wrote, noting that “hate crimes targeting Jews or Jewish institutions in the U.S. rose by 37 percent during Trump’s first year in office.”
The writer sang an incredibly different tune earlier this year, however, when similar scrutiny was placed on Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota over comments she made suggesting that U.S. politicians support Israel for money.
Those comments garnered substantial pushback from conservatives, and even a few of Omar’s Democratic peers, who found the freshman congresswoman’s reference to offensive stereotypes about Jewish money in politics incredibly distasteful.
Hasan dismissed these claims in February on his Intercept podcast “Deconstructed,” claiming Omar’s remarks received disproportionate amounts of criticism due to alleged Islamophobia in the U.S.
“Look, anti-Semitism is very real in the United States right now and anti-Semitic tropes involving Jewish money and secret Jewish cabals running the world are all too real,” Hasan said.
“Though to be clear, personally, I do not believe Ilhan Omar was trying to be, or thought she was being, anti-Semitic. She, perhaps naively, thought she was highlighting a powerful and reactionary lobby group, no different to the NRA.”
“But the pile on against Omar — a young black Muslim refugee immigrant woman lest we forget — has been ludicrously disproportionate and at times, I think, hysterical,” added Hasan, who is also Muslim.
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