Actress and comedian Roseanne Barr said Tuesday that American Jews should arm themselves for self-defense, and that President Donald Trump was protecting the community — and others as well.
“He’s an advocate for Jewish American citizens … and he’s been a friend to Jewish people in this country and all around the world — and to Christians, too.”
Asked if she would fear the consequences if someone other than Trump were elected, she responded: “Yeah … and not just to Jews.” She said that Christians and Muslims, too, were at risk from attacks on houses of worship.
Barr made her comments in a rambling interview on The Rabbi Shmuley Podcast, hosted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. (Rabbi Shmuley is also a frequent contributor to Breitbart News.)
Citing the example of Israel, Barr urged Jews to “fight force with force. That’s the only way you do it.” She noted that churches, too, have been targeted, and said that armed guards would eventually be necessary in all houses of worship.
“What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews,” she added, noting that antisemitism was just one tool being used to divide Americans from one another.
She agreed that Jews should consider buying guns. “Yeah, absolutely, like they are in Israel. You have to defend your community.” She added: “And non-Jews, too.”
She referred, positively, to the writings of Malcolm X. “That’s one of the things I did like about what Malcolm said, when he was young, is that communities have to band together to protect each other … I mean, that’s just common sense. A community exists for the protection of the people who live within it.”
She advised Rabbi Shmuley to get a gun. “Of course! And get trained,” she added.
“It’s time to wake up and protect yourself. Protect your people, your community, your family. You’re under siege — it’s not BS.”
She said she saw mass violence agains Jews — not as a possibility, but as a reality. “It’s already happened.” But she commended people of faith whom she saw “reaching out with love, and truth, and peace, and dialogue, and community.”
“Thank God for the United States of America,” she said, agreeing that the U.S. had protected Jews from persecution elsewhere. She blamed Democrats for encouraging antisemitic rhetoric.”People are being elected to sit in the hallowed halls of the House of Representatives and spouting Nazi doctrine,” she said.
The two also discussed the fact that the suspects in the two most recent high-profile antisemitic attacks were black, not white supremacists. “African-Americans and Jews were always brothers,” Rabbi Shmuley noted, citing the close alliances of the civil rights era.
Barr agreed, calling the history of the two communities “the same story” and suggesting that the dialogue between the two communities should stress “unity” rather than confrontation.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. 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.
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