David Duke Targets NYC Mayor for His Torah and Prayer Shawl

Image by Twitter/YouTube
David Duke wants President-elect Donald Trump to go after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the white supremacist wrote tweeted on November 25.
The mayor of NYC, Bill de Blasio (born Warren Wilhelm Jr.), is one disrespectful/hateful man – Sure hope Trump puts him in his place.#MAGA pic.twitter.com/HpZzWsi6AG
— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) November 18, 2016
De Blasio’s given name Warren Wilhelm, Jr. He was named after his father, who committed suicide in 1979, and has said took on his mother’s maiden name to honor her. How hateful and disrespectful, Duke implies, that someone with a Germanic-sounding name would proudly carry a Torah scroll.
“There’s a lot about NYC that the KKK probably hates,” De Blasio responded in a statement from spokeswoman Jessica Ramos. “Of our many diverse communities, Mr. Duke chose our relationship with the Jewish community to single out,” she wrote in her e-mailed response. “We should take a minute to be proud of that fact. And after this minute, we go back to work.”
De Blasio has denounced Trump and Duke is one of his ardent supporters.
De Blasio, who met with Trump last week in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, has said that the city under his leadership will resist federal anti-immigration proposals and that the president-elect’s rhetoric on the campaign trail was out of step with New Yorkers’ beliefs.
“We will fight anything we see as undermining our values. And here is my promise to you as your mayor – we will use all the tools at our disposal to stand up for our people,” he told a crowd of sanitation workers gathered at Manhattan’s Cooper Union last week.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
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!
