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This Jew Doesn’t Accept Sean Spicer’s Apology Because I Remember the Past
Spicer’s Latest Comments Are a Throwback to Easter Pogroms of the 1800s
Any student of history – and particularly Jewish history – will know that the time around Passover and Easter and into the rest of the Spring and Summer was, for many centuries, a strange mix of religious euphoria and life-threatening fear.Â
Passover is the Jewish holiday that celebrates liberation from slavery. It’s a time of pure happiness and gratitude as Jews focus on the miracle of freedom and redmption from the darkest moments of our collective history. And, from the 1800s through the middle of last century, (and probably earlier than that) it also marked the start of our darkest season.Â
As Easter approached every year, Christians across Eastern Europe and Russia would terrorize – and even kill – Jews in the name of Jesus. The military or police never stepped in to stop them. Sometimes, they secretly (and even publicly) helped them.Â
Why Easter? Ruth B. Bottigheimer explains:
For centuries, Christian churches all over the world taught children to hate Jews. Not only to hate them — but to justify their murder. They did so with one crucial choice: to tell the Gospel story in the words and the content of the book of Matthew rather than in alternate tellings by Mark, Luke, or John.
Matthew repeatedly used his telling of Jesus’ final days to exonerate Romans but to excoriate Jews for Jesus’ crucifixion. He magnified his vision of Jewish perfidy (choosing clemency for Barabbas, a murderer, rather than for Jesus) and violent Jewish unrest (leading Pilate to fear civic riot). He provided the historic justification for centuries of retaliation against Jews for Jesus’ death (Pilate washes his hands, tells the crowd to “see to it yourselvesâ€), and provided the fateful formula, “His blood be on us and on our children.â€
So when Sean Spicer gets on TV and parrots rhetoric used by Holocaust deniers to push the idea that Hitler “didn’t sink to using chemical weapons†while calling concentration camps that killed 11 million people (6 million of them Jews) with Zyklon B gas, “Holocaust Centers,†red flags went up across the world.
To add insult to injury, many of us Jews strictly observe the holiday and spent our mornings in synagogue services and the rest of the first (and second, for some) day offline and purposefully disconnected from the world, so we weren’t able to join the conversation or speak out against his statements until now.
This has been quite a conversation to come back to.Â
For his part, Spicer attempted to clarify his statements, issuing an absurd number of revisions and eventually apologizing (badly).
For me, Spicer’s apology rings hollow, for many reasons.
Spicer first called Jewish mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to apologize before apologizing to the rest of the world, as though Adelson speaks for all Jews (he doesn’t) or as if any of us care about his opinion (we don’t). Spicer’s apology to Adelson is a hallmark of anti-Semitic behavior. If/when Adleson forgave him, Spicer would be able to say, “See! This Jew thinks what I did was fine, so clearly I don’t hate ALL Jews! I can’t be anti-Semitic if I have a Jewish friend!â€Â
Plenty of folks lined up to be the administration’s token Jew – even though that role is already filled by Jared Kushner – including former George W. Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, and some Jews even spoke out in support of Spicer’s comments, furthering the idea that Jews aren’t ever full citizens of a country where they live because Jews are both a religion and a ethno-nation unto ourselves.
That’s literally the kind of talk that historically gets Jews kicked out of wherever we’ve lived – and we’ve been kicked out of just about everywhere.Â
I don’t need to explain just how damaging this can be to Jews – history has already shown that. And history has shown, over and over, how people can be persuaded into ignoring warning signs in favor of keeping quiet for the sake of not making waves.Â
Because many Jewish folks were offline observing Passover, a majority of the voices in the conversation weren’t Jewish. The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway wrote a very long piece explaining that Spicer just made a mistake – nevermind that he parroted the exact same language Holocaust deniers use – he just made a mistake, and we’re worrying too much. Because if there’s anyone who knows what types of anti-Semitism we should or should not be worrying about, it’s definitely someone who’s never experienced anti-Semitism, right?
God help me if I ever take religious – or life – advice from The Federalist.Â
When it comes down to it, it really is possible that Sean Spicer just made a mistake. In his defense, he’s incredibly bad at his job. To fully understand why his comments, matter, though, we have to look at the bigger picture:
- This is an administration that purposefully left any mention of Jews out of its International Holocaust Memorial Day statement and makes Holocaust “jokesâ€.
- This is an administration orchestrated and run by a known anti-Semite.
- This is an adminstration that refused to condemn anti-Semitic violence and threats for weeks, waiting until hundreds of sites and hundreds of thousands of people had been affected.
- This is an administration that is wildly supported by anti-Semites and neo-Nazis and has barely attempted to separate itself from them.
One occurrence is a mistake. Two is a slip-up. Spicer’s comments were just another in a long set of anti-Semitic dog whistles and rhetoric. That they came on the first day of Passover and following a pattern of hundreds of years of anti-Jewish violence is no coincidence.
Follow Robbie Medwed on Twitter: @rjmedwed
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
