Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi told seven U.S. senators last week that the American Media is run by Jews and he is a victim of their control.
The seven senators, John McCain (R-AZ), Chris Coons (D-DE), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Kirsten Gilibrand (D-NY), had a meeting for an hour and a half with Morsi, during which they asked him what he meant by his remarks calling Jews “bloodsuckers who attack Palestinians” as well as “the descendants of apes and pigs” in 2010.
Coons told The Cable that the conversation grew heated:
We tried to give President Morsi an opportunity, now that he is the president, to put his comments in a different context because he was claiming that he was taken out of context. On their face they seemed to be very offensive and inappropriate. It was a difficult conversation … He was attempting to explain himself … then he said, “Well, I think we all know that the media in the United States has made a big deal of this and we know the media of the United States is controlled by certain forces and they don’t view me favorably.”
Coons said that it was clear Morsi was speaking of Jews:
He did not say [the Jews], but I watched as the other senators physically recoiled, as did I. I thought it was impossible to draw any other conclusion. The meeting then took a very sharply negative turn for some time… Securing a positive relationship going forward is important and in America’s national interest, but we also cannot stand by and tolerate bigotry and hatred by foreign leaders.