During Sunday’s “Kasie DC” on MSNBC, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) took to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) defense on her ongoing antisemitism, saying she does not think the freshman congresswoman “intended her comments to be antisemitic.”
Hirono argued that in today’s environment, “everything we say can be viewed in a certain way,” and then turned the conversation into blaming President Donald Trump for exposing “a lot of the divisiveness and issues in our country.”
“I don’t think she intended her comments to be antisemitic, but we’re in an environment now where just about everything we say can be viewed in a certain way,” Hirono told host Kasie Hunt. “And what we have is a lot of hate speech against immigrants, against Muslims, against all kinds of people. And that is why I’m glad that when the House actually took a vote that they basically condemned all hate speech. And we certainly are hearing a lot of hate speech from the Republicans and the right.”
“[F]or them to suddenly rear up on their hind legs and go after one person, I think we should be looking at ourselves and saying that we have an environment now where basically President Trump in his campaign really exposed a lot of the divisiveness and issues in our country that we’ve never faced up to, including racism, including anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ and these are all areas that we need to face as a country,” she continued.
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