A Speaker Is Born, a President Is Diminished, and a Senate Majority Leader Has Gone Into Hiding: Eric Levine
Last week the country witnessed the birth of a Speaker of the House, the continuing diminishment of a President, and the disappearance of a Senate Majority Leader.
In the same week Mike Johnson stared down Marjorie Taylor Greene and her merry band of ignorant buffoons to pass the much needed and overdue foreign-aid package, he travelled to Columbia University in New York City — ground zero for the antisemitic protests exploding on our college campuses – to make two simple statements: Antisemitism is unacceptable and America stands with Israel. If only President Biden and Chuck Schumer had Johnson’s courage and moral clarity.
While the Speaker was giving a lesson in leadership, President Biden continued to embarrass himself and diminish his Presidency by putting the politics of his reelection ahead of America’s national security interests and Chuck Schumer has gone into hiding.
The Biden campaign has determined that for him to win in November, the President must win both Michigan and the votes of a significant majority of 18- to 24-year-olds. There is no better example of this strategy than how he is dealing with the explosion of antisemitism on our nation’s college campuses. Whether intentional or not, when the President publicly declares that Israel’s “conduct of the response in Gaza Strip has been over the top,” he feeds the grotesque and patently false narrative that Israel is engaged in a “genocide” against the Palestinians. His relentless public criticism of Israel’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, only confirms to the protestors and their fellow Jew-haters that Israel is an illegitimate state with no right to exist and that Jews are interlopers on Palestinian land who must be removed “by any means necessary.”
In addition to helping create false narratives, Biden regularly resorts to the politics of moral equivalence to advance his cynical self-serving political agenda.
Last week the President was asked whether he condemned the antisemitism at our colleges and universities. Bizarrely, he responded that he condemns the “antisemitic protests” but also “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” Ironically, he is condemning himself. Anyone who “understands what’s going on with the Palestinians” knows that the Palestinian people have no future unless and until Hamas has been destroyed. Biden’s statement is also a non sequitur. Unlike the vile antisemitic college protests he was asked about, there is not one example of a college campus being overrun by protestors (peaceful or violent) calling for the extermination of the Palestinian people. So, it remains a mystery exactly whom Biden was condemning.
Even if one is convinced the President believes in the wisdom and morality of his statements, there is no excuse for his not going to Columbia to tell those demanding the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel and the extermination of the Jewish people that their conduct is reprehensible and unamerican and these protests must stop immediately. He had the opportunity and chose not to use it. Last week, the President went to a fundraiser hosted by Michael Douglas in the New York suburb of Irvington. As he travelled from his New York City hotel to the Westchester event approximately 20 miles north of the City, he came within blocks of Columbia. The moral urgency of the moment demanded he go there. Unfortunately, like those who should have known better and spoken out in the 1930s and 1940s but remained silent, he just drove by without saying a word.
Compare his indifference to the plight of Jewish students to his constant false refrain of calling Republicans racists. It was not long ago that he called the newly enacted Georgia election law “Jim Crow 2.0.” It was irrelevant to him that the same law led to African Americans voting in record numbers. How many times has he made it his business to defame America by calling it “systemically racist”? Recall also the rally at which he called Republicans “semi-fascists.” While no one knows what that is, one can be certain it is not a compliment.
Clearly, the President has demonstrated his ability to call out bigotry, even when none exists. But he seems to lose his moral courage when the bigots are his voters and the targets are Jews.
While Joe Biden’s moral failings are manifest, they pale in comparison to the utter depravity of Chuck Schumer.
The Senate Majority Leader never misses an opportunity to tell audiences that he is the highest ranking Jew in America and that he is the “guardian of Israel.” No one believes that. Schumer is proud of his Judaism when it suits him politically. He stands by Israel when it is easy. When the going gets tough, Chuck dissembles. His perfidy is best exemplified by his public call for new elections in Israel in the hope of appeasing the radical Progressive base of the Democrat Party. He is more determined to see regime change in Jerusalem than Tehran.
As the Senator from New York, he has a special obligation to go to Columbia, which is located in the heart of New York City, and stand with his co-religionists against today’s onslaught of antisemitism. Because that would hurt him politically, he has instead gone into hiding. He leaves it for the rest of the country to ask, “where’s Chuckie?”
Like Biden, he needs Michigan to remain Senate Majority Leader. Like Biden, he has put his self-serving political needs ahead of his country and the welfare of his fellow Jews. Chuck Schumer has no moral core. He stands for nothing other than his own power.
The good news is: Mike Johnson is growing into his role as Speaker of the House. The bad news is: Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer are both searching for a moral compass.
Eric R. Levine
Eiseman Levine Lehrhaupt & Kakoyiannis, P.C.
805 Third Avenue
New York, New York 10022
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