Washington – One of five top foreign policy advisers to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is fighting allegations that he underplayed the extent of the Holocaust and sought to push Jewish employees out of the Pentagon during his tenure there.
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Claims of anti-Semitic rhetoric and activity have been leveled against Joseph Schmitz, named to the Trump campaign in March, who when serving as Defense Department inspector general under the George W. Bush administration received formal complaints for counting his success in “firing the Jews” as a tenure achievement.
Schmitz also allegedly lectured an employee “on the details of concentration camps and how the ovens were too small to kill six million Jews,” wrote a complainant, Daniel Meyer, who once oversaw whistleblower cases at the Pentagon. His complaint, originally obtained and published by the McClatchy Company, is before the executive branch’s quasi-judicial agency called the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Schmitz has called the accusations defamatory, but reports of anti-Semitic tendencies at the top of the Trump team reinforce a narrative that has dogged the candidate for months: That his campaign has tolerated anti-Semitic and otherwise bigoted rhetoric from an “alternative Right” strain of the Republican Party.
McClatchy reports the original allegations leveled against Trump have now been cited in another case, in which an orthodox Jewish employee this week accused the department of fostering an anti-Semitic environment ever since Schmitz’s time there.
“The anti-Semitic environment began under a prior inspector general, Mr. Joseph Schmitz,” the complaint letter reads.
Schmitz served at the Pentagon through several allegations from Senate Republicans of illegal interference regarding memos on the use of torture during the Bush administration. He resigned in 2005 to work at Blackwater Worldwide, a private military company then employed in Iraq.
“Allegations of anti-Semitism are serious and deserve serious investigation and response,” the Anti-Defamation League, founded to combat anti-Semitism, said in a statement on Thursday night in reaction to the McClatchy report. “Candidates must ensure and convey that their advisers have highest standards of integrity.”
He looks like someone who would know a lot about the ovens used by Hitler. The only think missing in the photo of him is a small mustache.
His name says it all
Joseph Schmitz? Are you keeding me? His grandfazzer killed my grandfazzer! Vat a small voild!
If he works for Trump, Trump is going to have more problems!!
I am not surprised. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He comes from mixed up family. I remember his father, John G.Schmitz, who was a congressman from California and had a reputation of being a racist. He replaced George Wallace, another racist, for the 1972 candidacy for president of the USA on a racist party line. He had to resign from congress when it was discovered that he had a second family with a German mistress at the same time that he was living with his legitimate family. He was also the national director of he John Birch Society. Joseph E. Schmitz’s sister, Mary Kay Letourneau, made national headlines some years ago when, as a teacher, she had an affair with her 13 year old student, spent 6 months in jail for this, and after being released, continued the affair and ended up having a child with this minor. She was then sentenced sentenced to seven years in prison. A real weird family!!
The problem with the Trump campaign team, is that outside of his daughter and son-in-law, there are no other Jews assigned to the campaign; his team for all purposes is judenrein. During the Primary season, Gov. Kasich of Ohio, and Sen. Ted Cruz made a point of going to frum neighborhoods in Brooklyn (i.e. an Orthodox Day school, and a matzah facto), and posing for photos with very frum Jews. Why couldn’t Trump have done so? Was he afraid of his redneck and white trash biker supporters objecting?
The answers for Trump could be numerous
– Didn’t know
– He is really not a antisemite
– Mainstream media
– Bla Bla Bla
But one question never get’s answered, “why do all racists, antisemites, bigots, or right wing extremists, gather around his candidacy? At the Republican convention, when they were talking about real Americans, what did they mean? Whites like us?
His campaign always used racist undertones, and refused (for several days) to denounce “grand wizard” David Duke (“Grand Wizard” is the highest ranking KKK member in a State).
From what he looks like you feel OK to say such a thing?
This is sinos chinum. You have time to ask forgiveness but do not wait until Yom Kippur.
What a surprise. Trumps white supremacists questioning the Holocaust.
Another Jew hater like the Brietbart uber fuhrer. But it’s OK with so many VIN posters, cause he works for the Trump…zha shtil!