WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is defending President Donald Trump’s response to the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and rejecting calls from a group of his Yale University classmates that he resign from the administration in protest.
In a statement issued by the Treasury Department, Mnuchin said “the president in no way, shape or form believes that neo-Nazi and other hate groups who endorse violence are equivalent to groups that demonstrate in peaceful and lawful ways.”
Mnuchin said that “as someone who is Jewish, I believe I understand the long history of violence and hatred against the Jews” and other minorities.
Mnuchin’s statement was in response to a letter signed by more than 300 Yale alums urging Mnuchin to resign. Mnuchin graduated from Yale in 1985.
The letter to Mnuchin, which was posted online said, “We call upon you, as our friend, our classmate, and as a fellow American, to resign in protest of President Trump’s support of Nazism and white supremacy. We know you are better than this, and we are counting on you to do the right thing.”
In his reply, which Treasury released late Saturday, Mnuchin said that he was proud to be serving as the nation’s 77th Treasury secretary and saw it as a great opportunity to pursue initiatives to boost the U.S. economy.
Both Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, who is also Jewish and is head of the administration’s National Economic Council, were standing with Trump at a news conference last week in the lobby of Trump Tower when the president said that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville protests. There has been speculation in financial markets over whether both Mnuchin and Cohn might soon decide to leave the administration.
In his response to the letter from classmates, Mnuchin offerred a strong defense of Trump, saying that “our president deserves the opportunity to propose his agenda and to do so without the attempts by those who opposed him in the primaries, in the general election and beyond to distract the administration and the American people from these most important policy issues — jobs, economic growth and national security.”
I seriously doubt this guy has been inside a synagogue or temple in years. Probably doesn’t even consider himself much of a Jew or he’d have had a whole different attitude and perspective on this.
I personally can’t understand how someone who identifies themselves as a Jewish person could not be more incensed by what happened in Charlottesville…and I’m not even talking about a very religious Jewish person either. Anyone culturally connected to the community, or may only listen to a sermon once a year on Yom Kippur, would know this was wrong and there is no equivocating, giving false equivalency to bigots, let alone actual nazis; nor does that give him the right to come to the defense of anyone that has done so, even if its the Pr*sident of the United States. There are no various shades of grey here…only one putrid shade of orange vomit spit out by America’s low-life nazi-loving white supremacist sympathizing Dictator-in-Chief.
When someone is this wrong on something in which millions paid their lives, there’s no defense for what we all fucking heard and observed with our own eyes. You make your mother ashamed Mnuchin…and I can finally say you look as dumb as you sound. Being filthy rich doesn’t mean smart, better or more noble. That’s something I hope people are beginning to learn in this country because you’re none of those things and probably never were. Got that. Done here.
These Yalies should really appeal to Mnuchin’s rabbi if he has one. I wonder if he even bothers to show up on the High Holy Days this year as a member in good standing somewhere. I suspect he’ll find something more important to busy himself with during that period of time…probably finding a way to jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States if he doesn’t give that Orange Julius what he wants instead. Nice work asshole. Now I’m done.
Except this because this just about tells you how opportunistic these types of bullshitters are that have no real moral compass when it gets right down to it:
Sleazy, opportunistic apologist. Shameful deflection away from the deep moral equivocation by trump.
I simply cannot believe that anyone, let alone someone Jewish, would step up and try to defend this completely indefensible president and his statement.
Jared? Ivanka? Bueller?