Chicago Congressman Danny Davis (D) recently told a reporter that people need to get over “the Jewish question” and said he would not apologize for being friends with Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic and racist Nation of Islam leader who Davis characterizes as an “outstanding human being.”
Recently several high profile liberals have been outed as being friends with and supportive of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan who has spent 50 years calling for a race war between blacks and whites. Farrakhan routinely calls white people “devils,” and has also attacked Jews, who he calls “satanic” and his “enemy,” while praising World War II Nazi leader Adolph Hitler as a “very great man.”
Farrakhan came to the forefront again recently, after a “journalist” admitted keeping secret a photo of then-Senator Barack Obama meeting with the Nation of Islam leader. The journalist explained that he kept the photo secret for 13 years to safeguard Obama’s reputation as a political moderate. He understood that if Obama were to be linked to Farrakhan, it could derail his rapid ascent in the Democrat Party.
When the photo was finally released in January, some reporters once again began seeking out politicians who have befriended the racist Farrakhan. One of those has been Chicago Democrat Danny Davis.
Davis has been a friend of the Chicago-based Nation of Islam extremists since the former was first elected as a Chicago Alderman in 1979. Now, on March 4, Daily Caller (DC) writer Peter Hasson tracked Davis down to ask him about that long friendship:
Spoke on the phone with @RepDannyDavis today — Davis confirmed he's buddies with Farrakhan, said he wants people to get over the whole anti-Semitism thing: "The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth" — Story to come
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) March 4, 2018
The Chicago Congressman told Hasson that when the Daily Caller wrote that he was friendly with Farrakhan, he was not misquoted even though the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) insisted that the Chicago politician was misquoted. Indeed, Davis said he had no idea why the ADL said he was misquoted. “I think that was what they wanted to write,” Davis said. “Nah, I don’t have no problems with Farrakhan, I don’t spend a whole lot of my time dealing with those kind of things.”
Davis went on to brush off Louis Farrakhan’s decades of spewing hate against Israel and Jews noting blithely that he “knows all that” but that he is a “pretty global individual” so “all that” doesn’t resonate with him. David said:
I’m a pretty global individual. So I know Farrakhan, I know the Middle East question, I know the Jews and Farrakhan—I know all that, but that’s not what I spend all my time focused on. … I know Farrakhan, been knowing him for years and years and years and years and years, and every once in a while some writer or somebody will I guess try to think of something to say about Farrakhan, but nah, my world is so much bigger than any of that. I don’t have time for that. I deal with it, you know, when it comes but nah, that’s not a real part of my focus.
Davis added that people need to get over “the Jewish question.”
“That’s just one segment of what goes on in our world,” Davis told the DC. “The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth. For those heavy into it, that’s their thing, but it ain’t my thing.”
The Chicago Democrat told the DC that he is friends with Farrakhan and sees no reason to apologize for that.
“I personally know [Farrakhan], I’ve been to his home, done meetings, participated in events with him,” Davis said. “I don’t regard Louis Farrakhan as an aberration or anything, I regard him as an outstanding human being who commands a following of individuals who are learned and articulate, and he plays a big role in the lives of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people.”
Davis also noted that he does not think Minnesota Democrat Congressman Keith Ellison is “super engaged with Farrakhan.” Davis said that Ellison is only lightly associated with the hateful Nation of Islam chief and the two only “happen to be in the movement” together.
Ellison, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Democrat National Committee as well as a Minnesota congressman, has also been fending off questions over his decades of association with Farrakhan. In February it was revealed that Ellison met with Farrakhan and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani in a secret meeting in 2013. And only days ago it was discovered that Ellison had helped sell copies of the Nation of Islam’s hate-filled Final Call newspaper.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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