Schwartz published an open letter in the Observer on Tuesday blasting Kushner for supporting Trump in light of the tweet.
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Invoking his own family’s wrenching history in the Holocaust, Kushner said the father-in-law he knew was no anti-Semite. It was a rare expression of regret, even if he was copping only to an error in judgement and not, say, an act of malice. He did, however, seem to acknowledge that some mistake had been made. “You know they took the star down”.
Donald Trump has faced criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for an image his campaign tweeted featuring Hillary Clinton and the Star of David.
“So the star – which is a star, not the Star of David”, he told the Cincinnati crowd.
As a matter of politics, Trump’s strategic maneuvering here boggles the mind. In response, Kushner’s family advanced the argument that he’s a real idiot. He’s a trusted campaign adviser, a speechwriter, and a vetter of vice presidential candidates. ― could be operating off of such divergent playbooks.
The presumptive Republican nominee also ripped the media -mainly CNN – for covering the controversial tweet, calling journalists from the television network “sick” on multiple occassions. Four straight days of critical coverage apparently were not enough.
“The star is a star”, Trump said during his Wednesday rally.
The Anti Defamation League said the image had “obvious anti-Semitic overtones”. Because users on the white supremacist forums where this image was found were no doubt implying Hillary is in the pocket of the sheriffs.
For The Observer, a paper that long covered Trump under prior ownership, it’s just latest twist in how it has grappled with covering the GOP frontrunner in the Kushner-era. House Speaker Paul Ryan said that anti-Semitic images “have no place in a presidential campaign”, while RNC Chair Reince Priebus said the campaign “realized very quickly it was not a smart idea”.
Trump insists that the media “was racist” for assuming that the image had Jewish connotations. That is a fair argument to make. Kushner then spends a good deal of the piece defending Trump against accusations of anti-Semitism that, again, no one is actually making.
The tweet was deleted and a new one posted that replaced the star with a circle.
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Schwartz noted in the letter that after she criticized the original tweet, she received a barrage of antisemitic abuse on social media, several examples of which she included as screenshots with her letter. But the fact that Trump is nice and not anti-Semitic in person is beside the point, and Kushner would know that if he read Schwartz’s letter. The words “most corrupt candidate ever” remained.
