After months of searching, through hundreds of events, and among hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, the media finally found one antisemite at a Trump rally. Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans are apparently thrilled.
The long-sought-after antisemite apparently emerged from seclusion at a Trump rally in Arizona on Saturday afternoon (which this reporter missed, ironically, because of the Jewish Sabbath). He chanted “Jew-S-A!” at the media in the back.
A video of the altercation, posted on Twitter by Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times, show a rather unhinged person.
After a campaign in which Hillary Clinton operatives have planted all kinds of people at Trump rallies, with the deliberate intent of inciting violence and grabbing media attention, the incident cannot be taken at face value. But presume, for argument’s sake, that the poorly-coiffed fellow really is the scumbag he is purporting to be.
No one reported when Trump rally attendees shouted their support for Israel in Ohio on Thursday (this reporter heard it once in Toledo and again in Geneva). No one, except Breitbart News, spoke to a very obvious Orthodox Jew at an Ohio rally — about this very topic:
Mordechai Giffin, 32, an Orthodox Jew from the Cleveland suburb of University Heights, spoke to Breitbart News about the accusation that Trump, and his campaign, were antisemitic.
“It’s just a stereotype,” Giffin said. “There’s no evidence of it. His daughter’s an Orthodox Jew and his son-in-law is Jewish.” Giffin, who owns a business in the area of the rally, told Breitbart News his main motivation for supporting Trump was his preference for “conservative government.”
The idea of using one crazed individual to judge millions of people is absurd. There are antisemites and racists and homophobes et cetera who support Hillary Clinton — the father of the Orlando terrorist is one who comes to mind — but the media never presume that they are representative of the whole.
On Sunday morning’s edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Jake Tapper grilled Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, and claimed Trump “has never seriously said, ‘I don’t want the support of those people’.” She rejected that — and she is right. Trump said in August 2016 that he does not want white supremacists to vote for him (via The Hill); he also said of David Duke in August 2015 that “I certainly don’t want his endorsement” (via Bloomberg). That was six months before Tapper asked him about Duke, and created a controversy where none had existed.
Has Hillary Clinton ever been asked to disavow her support from Black Lives Matter, which has an explicitly antisemitic platform accusing Israel of “genocide”? That’s not just a random crazy person at a rally — it’s the official view of a well-known organization whose support she has, in fact, sought.
And recall that when Barack Obama was — belatedly — challenged to disavow his racist pastor, Jeremiah Wright, he gave a speech declaring he would not. The media compared him to Abraham Lincoln and said his speech should be taught to first-graders.
This is an old, tired game. The media and Democrats used it against the Tea Party, falsely alleging that someone shouted the “N-word” at black members of Congress during an anti-Obamacare rally. Now they are using it against Trump and his fans.
The fact that it took so long for the media to find — finally! — one lunatic is a testament to the decency of Trump supporters, and Americans in general.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.