A Labor Department official has resigned following supposed “revelations” he published anti-Semitic messages on his Facebook page three years ago. The former official published no such thing.
The story is a fabrication, concocted entirely by a Bloomberg Law reporter who is either maliciously dishonest or exceptionally obtuse. Any intelligent person could tell right away that the Facebook posts were not anti-Semitic at all. They were, in fact, meant to mock the anti-Semitic views of fringe right-wingers who hate former Speaker Paul Ryan.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg Law published a report titled, “Trump Labor Aide Quits After Anti-Semitic Facebook Posts Surface.” Ah, yes. “Surface.” The three-year-old remarks, which have been deleted, merely dropped into the reporter’s lap.
The report, authored by journalist Ben Penn, claims conservative attorney Leif Olson trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes on his Facebook page in 2016. But then one reads what Olson wrote that year, and it becomes clear the Bloomberg Law article provides a grotesque and dishonest misrepresentation of what happened.
Here is the first thing that Olson wrote in 2016:
The guy just suffered a massive, historic, emasculating 70-point victory. Let’s see him and his Georgetown cocktail-party puppetmasters try to walk that one off.
This is clearly a joke! Even a reasonably intelligent ape can see that. Olson’s remarks were made in the context of Ryan obliterating his primary challenger — anti-Semitic, right-wing nutjob Paul Nehlen — who had been relentlessly promoted by certain right-leaning news outlets for months, only to flop hilariously on election day.
Olson was obviously mocking Nehlen’s crushing defeat and all of the far-right, anti-Ryan kookery that had been occurring online at the time. His Facebook post was not in earnest, as his own contemporaneous follow-up comments make clear.
“[Ryan’s] a neo-con, too, you know,” one social media user said in response to Olson’s original remark.
The attorney replied, “No he’s not. Neo-cons are all Upper East Side Zionists who don’t golf on Sunday, if you know what I mean.”
“That’s what I meant. He’s a Jew. Everyone knows that,” the social media user said.
Olson responded once more, “It must be true because I’ve never seen the Lamestream Media report it, and you know they protect their own.”
That this is all clearly in jest should go without saying. No, Olson does not actually believe Paul Ryan is Jewish. Come on, people.
Yet this is how Penn and his editors at Bloomberg Law have framed the story:
[…]
The revelation of Olson’s Facebook post also comes on the heels of President Donald Trump’s Aug. 20 claim that it’s disloyal for Jews to vote for a Democrat. That sparked charges that he was invoking an old anti-Semitic notion that Jews harbor “dual loyalty” to a foreign territory.
[…]
Olson, an unsuccessful GOP candidate in 2012 for a Texas district court judgeship, fired off a series of late-night posts on his personal Facebook page three years ago that started as a sarcastic quip about former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s blowout primary victory. They then devolved into an exchange referencing two anti-Semitic tropes: that Jews control the media and that they look out for members of their own faith.
Nehlen is not mentioned even once in the report. It does not get much more dishonest than this.
Olson has resigned from his post at the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division following Penn’s inquires to White House officials. That is really a shame.
The Bloomberg Law journalist, who did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, defended his article Tuesday, saying in a note on Twitter, “This is the latest in a series of mishaps under the Trump administration personnel vetting system.” He added, “What makes this one remarkable is that Olson’s Facebook page was public to his non-friends. Any cursory screening of his social media accounts could’ve uncovered the anti-Semitism.”
A representative for the news organization said elsewhere that they have no regrets whatsoever for how the story was reported.
“We stand behind our reporting,” the spokesperson said. “We contacted the White House and the Department of Labor asking for comment on Mr. Olson’s Facebook posts. Within four hours, the Department of Labor responded that Mr. Olson had resigned.”
Between this bogus article and the Washington Post op-ed accusing J.D. Vance of being a white nationalist, I am beginning to think they don’t teach reading comprehension in journalism school anymore.
