Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

California GOP Candidate Ron Cohen Defends 9/11 Conspiracy Tweets

A Jewish Republican running to oust an incumbent Democratic congressman in Silicon Valley doubled down on several conspiratorial statements during a conversation with the Forward, including that Barack Obama’s children have different biological parents and that the 9/11 terror attacks were an inside job used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Cohen, who is endorsed by the Republican Party of California in his bid to defeat Rep. Ro Khanna, made several incendiary tweets Sept. 22 and 23, disparaging immigrants he says don’t assimilate and promoting a “theory” that Sasha and Malia Obama are really the children of their parents’ friends Dr. Anita Blanchard and businessman Martin Nesbitt.

“I have no idea for sure. How would I? My comment about it is, I don’t know about that, but take a look at Blanchard and Nesbitt and it sure makes a lot of issues difficult to reconcile,” Cohen told the Forward on Sept. 25.

Cohen described himself as libertarian. He speaks in a friendly tone and still has a hint of a Midwestern accent. He talks about most of his beliefs as just raising questions and points towards conspiracy groups like Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth to back up his claims.

The businessman and local Republican official claimed that he supported Obama in 2008 because of his “outrage” over the Iraq War, though he hoped that the candidate, who he described as “an articulate man and great speaker,” would be more centrist.

But as soon as he saw Obama’s victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park, Cohen said he noticed that Obama did not resemble his children.

“What bothers me is the level of deception of this young state senator to move up the political ladder,” Cohen said.

He then started to explore other conspiracies around the Obamas, including that Michelle is really transgender and Obama frequented gay bathhouses in Chicago, according to one tweet.

Cohen, who said he was raised in Chicago by Reform Jewish parents, also retweeted an anti-Muslim video posted by a German account connected to an anti-Semitic forum on Gab, the Twitter-like platform popular with white supremacists and the so-called “alt-right.”

“I love everybody,” Cohen said. He added that he shared the video without researching who initially posted it because “it’s a show a of domination to take over an area of the street.”

He added that some racial and ethnic “groups are saying ‘we’re just going to talk and do business amongst ourselves’ and that’s not pluralism.”

He then defended his views on the 9/11 attacks, claiming that “no steel tower has ever fallen as a result of fire.”

Though his district and California in general has become a Democratic stronghold, the state has still attracted extremist candidates. Most notably, Republican Holocaust denier John Fitzgerald garnered 23% of the district’s all-party primary vote in June, earning the right to take on Democrat incumbent Rep. Mark DeSaulnier in a district across the bay from San Francisco.

“As always, California Republicans reject anti-Semitism, and all forms of religious bigotry, in the harshest terms possible,” California Republican Party chairman Jim Brulte said in a May 29 statement. “We reject John Fitzgerald’s campaign and encourage all voters to do the same.” State party officials have said that they have a policy of automatically endorsing all Republicans who make the November election, though they are considering revising that rule in light of Fitzgerald and other cases.

Cohen also garnered 23% of the vote in his primary, though he admitted that he expected to lose the general election by a huge margin. In the meantime, he said he plans to warn people about our growing federal deficit “galloping exponentially forward.” He is so confident that he is going to lose, in fact, that his website urges people not to donate to him, but instead give a Republican candidate in a battleground district in Orange County.

Cohen said he doesn’t expect to expound more on his controversial beliefs.

“[I] may be out of my mind, delusional. I was so angry about he fact that [Obama] turned form center to hard, hard, hard left and then got eight years [in office],” Cohen added. “That was the context.”

Both the California Republican Party and the Alameda County Republican Party did not return an immediate request for comment. Khanna’s campaign also did not return a request for comment.

Contact Ben Fractenberg at [email protected] or on Twitter, @fractenberg

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.