Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) lied to thousands of people at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual policy conference on Monday, telling them in a speech that President Donald Trump had referred to neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “very fine people” when the president had never done so.
The audience at AIPAC was predominantly Jewish, magnifying the impact and importance of the lie.
The context was Schumer’s attempt to condemn antisemitism on both sides of the political aisle, in the course of criticizing Democrats such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who had each made remarks suggesting American supporters of Israel owed “allegiance to a foreign country.”
Schumer said: “When someone says that being Jewish and supporting Israel means you are not loyal to America, we must call it out. When someone looks at a neo-Nazi rally and sees some very fine people among its company, we must call it out.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer at #AIPAC: “When someone looks at a neo-Nazi rally and sees some, ‘very fine people’ among its company, we must call it out. When someone suggests money drives support for Israel, we must call it out.” pic.twitter.com/6UIQTOwAom
— The Hill (@thehill) March 26, 2019
The problem: the latter never happened.
As Breitbart News and others have pointed out repeatedly, President Trump was referring to legitimate protesters in Charlottesville who were demonstrating against the removal of a state of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, as well as non-violent left-wing protesters who opposed them and racism in general.
The president specifically excluded the neo-Nazis and white supremacists from his description of “very fine people,” as a transcript of his remarks makes clear beyond any possible doubt. He also condemned the neo-Nazis in a speech from the White House the day before that was carried live on cable news.
Here's the video of Trump saying the neo-Nazis should be "condemned totally": https://t.co/ArRY9YZMuW and attached is the transcript. This is the worst lie a politician has ever told. pic.twitter.com/zcJ3Q7k6A2
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 26, 2019
The media, notably CNN, has mid-reported the “Charlottesville Hoax” to portray President Trump, falsely, as an antisemite.
CNN in particular has gone further and actually created a false impression of reality by editing video of Trump’s press conference deceptively, splicing it together with footage of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville to make it appear as though the president was referring to the participants as “very fine people” when he was not.
CNN has never offered a correction or a retraction of its deceptive claims.
In his misleading remarks, Schumer also referred to another hoax — namely, the claim that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had singled out Jews as “stealing” American elections. Schumer said: “When someone names only prominent Jews as trying to buy or steal our elections, we must call it out.”
Again, that never happened. McCarthy — who also spoke at AIPAC, and condemned Democrats’ tolerance of antisemitism within their midst — criticized Democrat mega-donors George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Michael Bloomberg in a tweet last year. CNN’s Jake Tapper then invented the idea that McCarthy had been attacking three Jews. Steyer, however, is Episcopalian.
Steyer’s father is Jewish, though that fact had been virtually unknown before journalists and Democrats discovered it could be used to accuse McCarthy of antisemitism. (McCarthy deleted the tweet.)
Omar herself has tried to use the false claim about McCarthy’s tweet to excuse her own remarks.
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.
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