Jewish GOP Lawmaker Walks Back Support For Trump On Charlottesville — A Bit
Image by YouTube
By Ari Feldman August 18, 2017
Congressman Lee Zeldin is the latest in a growing contingent of Jewish Republican political figures walking back their support for Trump. On CNN Friday morning Zeldin issued a more full-throated disagreement with the equivalence Trump drew on Tuesday between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. Zeldin’s first statement on the matter backed Trump’s take.
“I don’t know of anyone who would be there, who would associate themselves with that particular protest, who are good people,” Zeldin said.
Zeldin, who represents New York’s 1st District covering eastern Long Island, had originally defended Trump on Facebook.
“Antifa bused in criminals with bats and pepper spray for the purpose of committing acts of violence targeting anyone who was part of the protest against Charlottesville bringing down the statue of Robert E. Lee, whether associated with the KKK or Nazism or neither,” Zeldin wrote on Tuesday.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
