White House Torches Greg Gutfeld Over ‘Horrid, Dangerous, Extreme Lie’ That Jews Learned ‘Useful’ Skills During The Holocaust
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A White House spokesman condemned Fox’s Greg Gutfeld Tuesday for controversial comments he made about the Holocaust on Monday’s episode of The Five and chastised Fox News for allowing, then failing to condemn, the “obscenity.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates sent the following statement to CNN:
What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday — and has so far failed to condemn — is an obscenity.
In defending a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement, a Fox News host told another horrid, dangerous and extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils of the Holocaust.
Let’s get something straight that the American people understand full well and that is not complicated: there was nothing good about slavery; there was nothing good about the Holocaust. Full stop. Americans deserve to be brought together, not torn apart with poison. And they deserve the truth and the freedom to learn, not book bans and lies.
Gutfeld made the comments in a debate with co-host Jessica Tarlov over Florida’s new Black history curriculum which teaches slaves learned skills. Tarlov argued the curriculum made her uncomfortable and said, “Would someone say about the Holocaust, for instance, that there were some benefits for Jews?”
Gutfeld rose to the occasion and replied, “Did you ever read Man’s Search for Meaning? Vik Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful. Utility, utility kept you alive!”
The White House joined the chorus of notable figures speaking out against Gutfeld, including key Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman.
“This fucking imbecile @greggutfeld is beyond absurd. He argues that Jews honed skills in the Holocaust that allowed some to survive. More than SIX MILLION men, women, & children because they weren’t useful enough. @FoxNews is complicit in this hateful tirade. #NeverAgain,” Vindman tweeted in response to clip of Gutfeld’s comments from Monday.
Earlier Tuesday, the Auschwitz Museum condemned Gutfeld’s remarks as an “oversimplification” of the horrors that confronted the Jews during the Holocaust, tweeting in part:
While it is true that some Jews may have used their skills or usefulness to increase their chances of survival during the Holocaust, it is essential to contextualize this statement properly and understand that it does not represent the complex history of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany.
The Anti-Defamation League argued while it wasn’t obvious what Gutfeld was saying, he flubbed his history. “It is not clear from Gutfeld’s comments if he is arguing that Jews learned skills in the Holocaust, or that Jews who had skills had a better chance of staying alive. The latter is something that is well-documented, while the former is nonsense. That said, many millions of Jews, who, in Gutfeld’s words, had ‘utility,’ were still murdered,” the spokesperson told The Daily Beast.
