CNN Hammers Mark Levin For ‘Antisemitic’ and ‘Shameful’ Comments About Its Anchors
In a statement Thursday, CNN slammed Fox News host Mark Levin’s rant about star anchors Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper as “antisemitic” and “shameful.”
Levin took to his radio show Wednesday where he made the false claim that Blitzer’s parents were not Holocaust victims, then attacked Tapper as a “self-hating Jew.” Both CNN anchors have been covering the Israel-Hamas war from the Middle East.
The CNN statement read:
Mark Levin’s comments about Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper were wildly uninformed, inappropriate and shameful. Wolf is the child of Holocaust survivors and all four of his grandparents were murdered during the Holocaust, a fact that Wolf has personally reported on through a special documentary, trips to Auschwitz, written reflections, and decades of public speaking on Holocaust education and awareness. Levin’s antisemitic rhetoric is dangerous, offensive and should be universally denounced.
Blitzer has publicly spoken about his parents, Cesia and David Blitzer, Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust. His grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz.
Even so, Levin made the false pronouncement live on the air.
“I want you to listen to Wolf Blitzer, to Hakeem Jefferies on CNN yesterday. Wolf Blitzer, as I understand it, his parents weren’t victims in one way or another of the Holocaust. But certainly his family comes out of that background, but you wouldn’t know it because the ideology of the left is very attractive, it’s very compelling, particularly if you’re in media,” Levin said.
MediaMatters reported that Levin next turned his attention to Tapper and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.
Levin continued the segment by declaring that “CNN is filled with a lot of self-hating Jews, in my opinion,” singling out CNN anchor Jake Tapper as well as MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell, before saying that by asking about civilian deaths, “Wolf Blitzer wants Israel to die, with such a dumbass question like that.” (Last week, Levin called Tapper “a propagandist for the enemy,” and further declared, “He’s another, in my view, self-hating Jew.”)
Levin responded on his radio show on Thursday afternoon by claiming he did not allege Blitzer’s parents weren’t in the Holocaust.
“Now you can hear that they say weren’t if you’re really listening and you wanted to say weren’t, was so that you can hear it I say weren’t,” he said. “I barely remember saying it. So we’ve played it. We’ve got the audio you can twist it to say weren’t.”
Listen here.
CORRECTION: This article has been corrected to reflect that Wolf Blitzer’s father grew up in the town of Auschwitz. He was not imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp, as originally stated.
