Second gentleman Doug Emhoff warned against a “rapid rise” in anti-Semitism across the United States in recent months, urging government officials not to brush off recent incidents that represent an “epidemic of hate facing our country.”
Emhoff’s comments came during a roundtable event hosted at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, at which the vice president’s husband pointed to a rising number of anti-Semitic attacks over the last few months. The event has been in the works for weeks, but the roundtable took on renewed significance after recent anti-Semitic comments made by rapper Kanye West online and after he attended a dinner with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
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“Let me be clear: words matter. People are no longer saying the quiet parts out loud — they are literally screaming them,” Emhoff, who is Jewish, said on Wednesday. “Antisemitism is dangerous. We cannot normalize this.”
The roundtable event featured more than a dozen Jewish groups as well as an array of Biden administration officials, including Director of Public Engagement Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, and White House Jewish Liaison Shelley Greenspan.
Without naming names, Emhoff called out people who do not speak out against anti-Semites or Holocaust deniers, likely referring to Trump who has not denounced West’s comments in a recent Alex Jones interview in which the rapper said he “likes Hitler” and “loves Nazis.”
In that same interview, West went on to deny the events of the Holocaust, saying, “the Holocaust is not what happened, let’s look at the facts of that and Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities.”
“As long as I have this microphone, I’m going to speak out against hate, bigotry, lies. I’m going to speak out against those who praise fascist murderers and idealize extremists,” Emhoff said. “I’m going to speak out against Holocaust deniers. I’m going to call those out who won’t do it.”
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White House Domestic Policy Adviser Susan Rice, who was also in attendance, took a more direct hit at West’s comments, although she also refrained from naming the rapper in her roundtable comments.
“There’s nothing more vicious than what we are seeing today, out of the mouths of our leaders, our public figures, our celebrities, our elected officials,” she said.
