On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said that being Jewish “is, somehow, maybe a complete dealbreaker in the Democratic Party.” And asked Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) if he could “convince the Democratic Party that being Jewish isn’t like the worst thing a person could be now?” He also stated that “among the young people, antisemitism got to be kind of cool.”
Maher said, “Here’s the question I have to ask you, which is something I would have never guessed I would be asking a Democrat in this year, which is that you’re a Democrat running, possibly, for the nomination, and you’re Jewish. And this is, somehow, maybe a complete dealbreaker in the Democratic Party. The speed at which antisemitism has gone to a place where I never imagined it would go. Just this past week, bombings at synagogues in Toronto, Belgium, Michigan — the guy drove a truck with explosives into the largest synagogue in West Bloomfield — Norway — they arrested someone [for] suspicious behavior outside a synagogue — Rotterdam in the Netherlands — synagogue. I see a pattern here. And somehow it got — and among the young people, antisemitism got to be kind of cool. You think you could — if you did run for president — you could fight this and convince the Democratic Party that being Jewish isn’t like the worst thing a person could be now?”
Shapiro said that, running for office as a Jewish person, he has mostly gotten a positive reception, but there are real problems with antisemitism.
Maher added that antisemitism is an issue among the extremes of both parties.
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