Tucker Carlson's Bigoted Comparison of Cory Booker to Louis Farrakhan
The FOX host likened one of Congress's most philo-Semitic gentiles to one of America's most anti-Semitic preachers, simply because they're both black
As you may have heard, New Jersey senator Cory Booker has had a good week. An array of New York Times pundits ranked him as the best performer in Wednesday night’s debate, and his campaign has been raking in contributions. Progressive columnist Michelle Goldberg asked, “why not Cory Booker?” and made the case for his candidacy.
Unsurprisingly, FOX News host Tucker Carlson had a different take on Booker’s debate showing. Now, it would only be natural for a pro-Trump commentator to express political differences with a left-wing presidential contender. But that’s not what Carlson did. Instead, he unleashed an ugly personal smear:
Cory Booker meanwhile is in the process of transitioning to a brand-new identity. He spent most of the evening trying to sound like a Nation of Islam recruiter rather than the deeply privileged son of two IBM executives which is what he is.
To refresh your memory, the Nation of Islam is headed by Louis Farrakhan, who has said Jews were behind 9/11 and called them “Satanic” “termites,” among other calumnies. Cory Booker, on the other hand, was the co-president of the Chabad House at Oxford when he was a Rhodes Scholar. He then co-founded the Eliezer Jewish Society at Yale Law School, a fact he proudly noted in his Yale commencement address in 2013. He kept an Artscroll Tanakh on his Senate desk. He quietly visited the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe the night before he announced his run for president. And he literally quoted Jewish prayer in his CNN town hall on the campaign trail.
Basically, Booker is arguably the most philo-Semitic member of Congress, and the only thing he shares in common with the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan is that they are both black. In other words, rather than attempt to dispute Booker’s political positions, Carlson engaged in a crude race-baiting attack, premised on the insinuation that all African Americans are anti-Semitic.
This mendacity deserves to be called out and exposed in its own right. But it’s also a perfect example of the concerted campaign by President Trump and his allies to disingenuously paint all Democrats as “anti-Israel” and “anti-Semitic,” despite all facts to the contrary. (As you may recall, I wrote about this effort my last newsletter, and explained how it is helping to mainstream the Israel boycott movement.)
These critics do have one substantive grievance against Booker, which is that he voted for the Iran deal (with a tremendous number of caveats and additional proposals to ensure Israel’s security). But even if one were to accept, for the sake of argument, that this single vote should erase Booker’s entire pro-Jewish and pro-Israel record, Booker himself has since said this on the Democratic debate stage:
We need to renegotiate and get back into a deal, but I’m not going to have a primary platform to say unilaterally I’m going to rejoin that deal. Because when I’m president of the United States, I’m going to do the best I can to secure this country and that region and make sure that if I have an opportunity to leverage a better deal, I’m going to do it.
Moreover, the New Jersey senator has taken hits during the campaign from the hard-left for his refusal to throw Israel and its supporters under the bus, especially after he addressed his constituents at the most recent AIPAC conference.
Let’s be clear on what’s really happening here: Democratic politicians like Booker could convert to Judaism and refuse to eat gebrochts on Passover, and an entire industry of Republican hacks would still claim that they hate Jews. This is because these GOP operatives have a political incentive to try and break off Jewish voters from the Democratic party. It’s not because they have any genuine concern for Jews or Israel. If they did, they’d be lauding people like Booker as bipartisan partners in the fight for Jewish rights, not lying about their record on the issue at every opportunity.
That’s their right as political propagandists. It’s everyone else’s right to notice exactly what they’re doing, and act accordingly.
Jews have enough real enemies without inventing new ones out of whole cloth.
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