Trump
hammered for Holocaust remarks
White
House calls outrage over omitting Jews in Trump’s statement on Holocaust
‘pathetic
Spicer says ‘the
president went out of his way to recognize the Holocaust’
The White House says
President Trump is aware of some of the criticism from the American Jewish
community over the omission of Jews in his statement on International Holocaust
Remembrance Day, but White House press secretary Sean Spicer calls the
controversy “ridiculous” and “pathetic.”
“He’s aware of what people
have been saying, but I think by and large he’s been praised for it,” Spicer
told reporters at his daily briefing on Monday.
“The president
recognized the tremendous loss of life that came from the Holocaust,” Spicer
said. “To suggest otherwise, I mean, I’ve got to honest: the president went out
of his way to acknowledge the Holocaust.”
Spicer became
defensive during the briefing when he was again asked about the backlash.
“To suggest that
remembering the Holocaust and acknowledging all of the people — Jewish,
gypsies, priests, disabled, gays and lesbians — frankly, it’s pathetic,” Spicer
said. “The idea that you’re nitpicking a statement that sought to remember this
tragic event that occurred and the people who died in it is just ridiculous.”
Trump’s six-sentence
statement, issued by the White House on Friday, honored “victims, survivors
[and] heroes of the Holocaust,” but made no specific mention of Jews:
It is with a heavy
heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes
of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror
inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.
Yet, we know that in
the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest. As we remember
those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save
the innocent.
In the name of the
perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and
my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of
good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.
Spicer said the
statement “was written by an individual who is both Jewish and a descendant of
Holocaust survivors.”
But its omission of
Jews did not go unnoticed.
“The Final Solution
was aimed solely at the Jews,” John Podhoretz, a conservative columnist, wrote in Commentary
magazine. “The Holocaust was about the Jews. There is no ‘proud’ way to offer a
remembrance of the Holocaust that does not reflect that simple, awful,
world-historical fact. To universalize it to ‘all those who suffered’ is to
scrub the Holocaust of its meaning.”
On NBC’s “Meet the
Press” Sunday, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was asked by host
Chuck Todd if the administration was effectively whitewashing anti-Semitism.
“I’m not whitewashing
anything, Chuck,” Priebus said. “It’s a terrible time in history. And obviously
I think you know that President Trump has dear family members that are Jewish.
And there was no harm or ill-will or offense intended by any of that.”
Trump’s daughter,
Ivanka, and her husband, Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner, are Jewish.
Kushner’s paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors who came to the U.S.
as refugees.
The Haaretz newspaper
ran an op-ed criticizing Kushner for staying silent on both
the Holocaust statement and Trump’s executive order, issued the same day,
temporarily banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
“After the Holocaust
Day refugee bombshell announcement, any solace that could be found in Kushner’s
Jewishness is gone,” Allison Kaplan wrote in a column entitled “Shame on You, Jared
Kushner.”
Priebus was asked if
the administration regretted not including Jews in the president’s statement.
“I don’t regret the
words,” Priebus said. “I mean, everyone’s suffering in the Holocaust including
obviously all of the Jewish people affected and the miserable genocide that
occurred is something that we consider to be extraordinarily sad and something
that can never be forgotten and something that if we could wipe it off of the
history books we [would]. But we can’t.”
The Anne Frank Center
for Mutual Respect, a U.S. civil and human rights group, condemned Priebus’
explanation.
“Wake up and smell the
Antisemitism in the White House,” Steven Goldstein, the organization’s
executive director, said in a statement. “President Trump and his
administration are engaging in the kind of Holocaust denial we have seen
elsewhere from the most offensive scoundrels of history. Is that what we have
come to deal with here?”
Fact: @RJC @ADL_National @AJCGlobal @jpodhoretz @ZOA all called out omission. Alternative
fact: What @presssec said. https://medium.com/@J0NATHAN_G/neveragain-f201a1f0e7d5#.40urpy9pe … https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status/826145388868542465 …
Jonathan Greenblatt,
chief executive and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, blasted Trump for “overlooking the defining aspect of Holocaust Remembrance
Day — the horror that befell the Jewish people.”
“As if this were not a
sufficient error, repeated statements by White House surrogates in the days
that followed only compounded the sin,” Greenblatt wrote. “Rather than
acknowledge the oversight, Administration officials suggested that there was
nothing amiss. As one official put it, ‘Everyone suffered in the Holocaust,
including the Jewish people.’
“Wrong,” Greenblatt
continued. “The suffering of the Jewish people is not an afterthought, a
prepositional phrase to be bolted onto the end of a sentence. The suffering of
the Jewish people is the whole reason that the concept of the Holocaust was
defined.”
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine was equally critical.
“This is what Holocaust denial is,” Kaine said on “Meet the Press.” “It’s
either to deny that it happened or many Holocaust deniers acknowledge, ‘Oh yeah
people were killed. But it was a lot of innocent people. Jews weren’t
targeted.’ The fact that they did that and imposed this religious test against
Muslims in the executive orders on the same day, this is not a coincidence.”
