Washington – White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders today added fuel to the controversy over anti-Semitism in the country by refusing to clarify whether President Donald Trump believes the Democratic opposition “hates Jews”.
In a press conference, the second one given this year, Sanders faced multiple questions about information published on Sunday by the news portal Axios.
According to that media, during a closed-door address last Friday in Mar-a-Lago (Florida), Trump said that “Democrats hate the Jewish people,” and said that his support for Israel is so strong that, if he could To stand for election to be prime minister in that country, would have 98% support in the polls.
Sanders did not want to confirm whether or not Trump said the phrase that Axios attributed to him -that he quoted three sources who attended the event-, but he harshly criticized the opposition party.
“The statements that some Democrats have made and that the Democratic leaders have not reported, are aberrant and sad, should be reported (citing the person) by name, not putting it in a diluted resolution,” said Sanders.
The spokeswoman referred to the resolution passed last week in the lower house, Democratic majority, which condemned “anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism and other forms of intolerance.”
That text had its origin in the controversy generated by the comments of the democratic and Muslim legislator Ilhan Omar, who denounced the political influence in the country of the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC and the supposed “loyalty” of some legislators to Israel.
Those statements were branded anti-Semitic by some politicians of both parties, and Trump demanded that Omar be expelled from the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Lower House.
The Democratic leadership finally decided to push for a more general resolution and not centered on Omar, after several party figures defended the congresswoman and argued that other right-wing politicians assume even more xenophobic positions and do not raise such condemnations.
Trump himself has been criticized for his response to the violent clashes of 2017 in Charlottesville (Virginia), when he blamed it on both the neo-Nazis who came to kill a young woman and the protestors of the left who protested against them.
But Sanders defended today that Trump has “repeatedly condemned hatred, intolerance and racism in all its forms,” and denied that in the case of Charlottesville said there were “very good people” among the neo-Nazis, something that the president did before the cameras in 2017.
“The president has condemned the neo-Nazis and called them by his name,” the spokeswoman insisted. (EFEUSA)
