Rachel Maddow Smears Trump Judicial Nominee as Racist by Misrepresenting Law Review Article

Rachel Maddow Smears Trump Judicial Nominee as Racist by Misrepresenting Law Review Article

The liberal media has completely abandoned the Trump Russia conspiracy and has moved on to promoting a false narrative about white supremacy. Rachel Maddow is clearly on board, and she used her platform to falsely smear a Trump judicial nominee this week.

Sometimes you have to wonder if Maddow isn’t malicious but just ignorant, despite her inflated confidence in her intellectual abilities. This seems like one of those times.

Her target here is Steven Menashi, whom Trump has nominated to the Second Circuit Court. Maddow fixated on a law review article Menashi wrote, but she got it completely wrong.

Ed Whelan writes at National Review:

Rachel Maddow’s Racial Smear of Second Circuit Nominee Steven Menashi

In a 2010 law-review article titled “Ethnonationalism and Liberal Democracy,” Second Circuit nominee Steven Menashi argues that “ethnonationalism remains a common and accepted feature of liberal democracy that is consistent with current state practice and international law.”

Menashi’s specific purpose in the article is to refute claims that “Israel’s particularistic identity—its desire to serve as a homeland for the Jewish people—contradicts principles of universalism and equality upon which liberal democracy supposedly rests.”…

In a lengthy segment on MSNBC last night, Rachel Maddow grossly distorts Menashi’s argument and tries to twist it into “a high-brow argument for racial purity.” (Video at 9:00-9:36.) She falsely claims that Menashi argues “how definitely democracy can’t work unless the country is defined by a unifying race.” (Video at 6:57-7:10.)

But Menashi’s argument about national identity is clearly not about “racial purity” or a “unifying race.” Indeed, the fact that Israelis from Ethiopia are black makes it impossible to take seriously the claim that Menashi is making a case for “racial purity.” Menashi further states that it “is not even clear … that Israel’s national identity can even be described as ‘ethnic’” (in a narrow sense of that concept), as Israeli Jews come from “Argentina, Ethiopia, Germany, Morocco, Russia, and Yemen.”

You can read Menashi’s article here.

Cortney O’Brien of Townhall has more on this:

Rachel Maddow Accused of ‘Anti-Semitic Rant’ Against New Trump Nominee

With so much anti-Semitic rhetoric on the Democratic side of the aisle lately and among progressives in general, it’s hard to keep up, but this opinion from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow warranted a response. Maddow took aim at Steve Menashi, Trump’s newest nominee to the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a lengthy segment on her program Thursday night…

Yet, it was a law review article to which he contributed for the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law entitled “Ethnonationalism and Liberal Democracy” that gave Maddow pause about his nomination. In it, Menashi argued how a nation like Israel, dominated by one ethnicity, can be a successful democracy. Maddow interpreted the “blood curdling” document to mean the Jewish nominee was arguing that, “you can’t have a country that works if you’ve got all sorts of different people in it.”

It is “a high-brow argument for racial purity,” she maintained.

“It ends with a war cry,” Maddow explains, that suggests “democracy can’t work unless the county is defined by a unifying race.”

You can watch the Maddow segment below. The video is cued to begin at the 6 minute mark, just press play:

There has been some push back over this. Matt Brooks is the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

This is unacceptable….at a minimum, @maddow and @MSNBC need to apologize for this anti-semitic attack. https://t.co/dZ1gaAUmRe

— Matt Brooks (@mbrooksrjc) August 16, 2019

The RJC also tweeted about this:

MSNBC allows @maddow to accuse an Iraqi Jew of racism because she can’t comprehend the highly qualified social science evidence cited in his law review article published by @Penn.

How can @MSNBC allow her to stay on air? This is both ignorant & defamatory https://t.co/dZZsMnA7OO

— RJC (@RJC) August 16, 2019

Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network also chimed in:

.@maddow should be ashamed of herself for the anti-Semitic rant she just launched against 2nd Circuit nominee Steven Menashi. Had she actually read his law-review article, she would know that Menashi says the exact opposite of what Maddow claims. Intentional distortion? https://t.co/Gz0oSqNKMJ

— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) August 16, 2019

At the very least, Maddow owes Mr. Menashi, and her viewers, an apology.

Featured image via YouTube.

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