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.”








