Democrat Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) told an audience at Politicon in Los Angeles on Saturday that he continues to support extremist Linda Sarsour because of her leadership role in organizing the Women’s March last January.
During a question-and-answer session, Lieu was asked about his role in presenting an award to Sarsour on behalf of a left-wing Asian-American organization in October 2017.
Honored to join @AAAJ_AAJC tonight & present civil rights activist & leader of women’s march, Linda Sarsour, with the 2017 Changemaker Award pic.twitter.com/lE1n6FiEAW
— Rep. Ted Lieu (@RepTedLieu) October 5, 2017
Sarsour is a left-wing extremist with a notorious record:
- In 2011, Sarsour tweeted that Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born critic of Islam should have her vagina taken away. (Ali was a victim of forced female circumcision as a child.)
- In January 2017, after helping to organize the Women’s March, Sarsour told Israel’s Ha’aretz that she supported boycotting Israel and wanted to see it replaced.
- In July 2017, Sarsour called for “jihad” against the Trump administration. (She later claimed she was not referring to violence.)
- In that same July 2017 speech, Sarsour praised Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindexed co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, as her “favorite person in the room.” Wahhaj’s son was recently arrested for training children to carry out mass shootings at a compound in New Mexico.
- Last December, Sarsour defended Palestinian terrorism against Israel, declaring in a Facebook post: “Nobody gets to tell an occupied people how to respond to their own oppression. … Oppressed people determine how, when and where to resist.”
- In March, Sarsour declared that Zionists cannot be feminists — which excludes Jews who support Israel, as the most pro-woman country in the Middle East.
- Sarsour embraced and defended Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who was deported last year after lying on her immigration papers about her past conviction for murdering two Israeli civilians in a bomb attack on a supermarket in 1969.
- Sarsour has backed fellow Women’s March leaders as they have supported Nation of Islam Louis Farrakhan, who called Jews “termites” last week.
Others have stood up to Sarsour. Last year, rock star Courtney Love called Sarsour an “anti-Semitic terrorist” who is “using feminism as a tool to promote her radicalism.”
But Lieu would not condemn Sarsour. When confronted at Politicon by a supporter of his Republican opponent, Dr. Ken Wright, about his role in the award for Sarsour, Lieu first protested: “It’s not my award.”
Asked to denounce Sarsour, Lieu refused, and defended Sarsour instead: “She organized the Women’s March, which is an unbelievable march,” he said, overlooking the association of the Women’s March with Farrakhan and Sarsour’s other extremist views.
Congressman @tedlieu called out by members of the Jewish community at #Politicon2018 for giving an award to Linda Sarsour, as well as his refusal to denounce her. pic.twitter.com/KbXVIfNdDm
— The Columbia Bugle (@ColumbiaBugle) October 21, 2018
The questioner also asked Lieu why he would not debate Wright. Lieu did not appear to answer. Thus far, he has avoided debates since being elected to represent the heavily Democratic 33rd congressional district in 2014.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. 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.