ADL Reports Uptick In Anti-Semitic Tweets Aimed At Jared Kushner

White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, second from left, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, third from left, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, right, listen during a bilateral meeting with President Donald... White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, second from left, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, third from left, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, right, listen during a bilateral meeting with President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump was meeting again with his Chinese counterpart Friday, with U.S. missile strikes on Syria adding weight to his threat to act unilaterally against the nuclear weapons program of China's ally, North Korea. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) MORE LESS
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

There’s been a marked increase in the amount of anti-Semitic tweets aimed at Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser over the past week, the Anti-Defamation League has found.

The wave of anti-Semitic tweets from white nationalist accounts came as Steve Bannon was removed from the National Security Council’s Principals’ Committee and as Trump ordered missile strikes on a Syrian air base in retaliation for a chemical attack believed to be carried out by Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“What started as a few isolated anti-Semitic tweets suggesting that Jared Kushner should be ‘fired’ because of his ‘Jewish supremacist views’ has quickly metastasized into a full-blown onslaught of anti-Semitic hate speech,” Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL, said in a statement.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the tweets have argued that the Trump administration is trying to start a war to advance Israel’s interests and that Trump ditched his nationalist posture at the suggestion of Kushner and other Jewish members of the administration.

Tweets with the hashtag #fireKushner began circulating on Thursday with a tweet about Bannon’s removal from the NSC and the U.S. strikes in Syria, according to the ADL. Anti-Semitic tweets using the #fireKushner and #KushnerAtWar hashtags began circulating with increasing frequency on Friday, and by the end of that day, the ADL found that three hashtags about Kushner, some of which were associated with anti-Semitic tweets, were trending with about 130,000 mentions.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke joined the chorus of anti-Semitic tweets aimed at Kushner:

The tweets followed Bannon’s removal from the NSC and reports on his waning power in the Trump administration. Before working for Trump, Bannon was the executive chairman at Breitbart News, which has served as a platform for the white nationalist “alt-right.”

Bannon and Kushner also have been at odds recently, reportedly prompting Bannon to consider resigning. New York Magazine reported that Kushner argued in favor of missile strikes against Syria following the chemical attack, while Bannon pushed for the Trump administration to stay out of it; Kushner’s line of thinking won out.

Following the missile strikes, Trump’s biggest alt-right fans railed against the administration for carrying out the strikes after the President had run on an “America first” message during the campaign.

Latest Muckraker
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: