Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is the highest-ranking Jewish lawmaker in the history of the U.S. Congress, which made it all the more notable when Donald Trump — who is not Jewish — told reporters last month, in reference to the New York Democrat, “He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore.”
As we discussed soon after, the American presidency is powerful, but it does not include the power to issue public declarations on the scope of another person’s Jewishness. What’s more, there’s an inherent antisemitism in rhetoric like this: It is simply not up to Trump to decide who the “real” Jews are based on his personal whims or officials’ willingness to go along with his agenda.
Three weeks later, it appears one of the president’s allies on Capitol Hill decided to go even further. The Columbus Dispatch reported:
U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, called the Senate’s top Democrat Chuck Schumer — the highest-ranking Jewish U.S. elected official — ‘Fuhrer,’ a reference to the title used by Adolf Hitler. Moreno, who was elected in November, made the comment to reporters outside the Senate chamber as members of his caucus struggled to agree on a path forward to try to pass President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-cut agenda.
“Here’s the main thing you’ve got to understand. Republicans are independently minded. Democrats are monolithic sheep that follow the Fuhrer Schumer’s orders,” Moreno said.
Asked about the comment, Schumer said “Look, let me say this. What Sen. Moreno did is absolutely despicable. It’s antisemitic, plain and simple. It’s outrageous. I lost lots of people in the Holocaust to Hitler. And for him to use those words, first, we demand he apologize immediately, but we also demand that his Republican colleagues start denouncing him on something that is so blatantly antisemitic.”
Moreno, three months into his career in public office, appears to have burned a bridge that won’t soon be mended. But I’m also stuck on how little Moreno seems to understand about the contemporary American political parties and their members. As the rookie senator sees it, Republicans are “independent” thinkers, while Democrats are “monolithic sheep”? Even if we put aside the obvious offensiveness of Moreno’s use of the word “Fuhrer” — especially in reference to the highest-ranking Jewish lawmaker in the history of the Congress — it’s hard not to notice that he seems to describe an alternate reality with no relationship to our own. UPDATE (April 3, 2025, 4:56 p.m. ET): This post has been updated to include a quote from Schumer about Moreno’s comments.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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