Ben Shapiro Slapped With Twitter Fact Check For Claiming Bernie Sanders Isn’t Jewish
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Daily Wire founder and conservative podcast host Ben Shapiro attacked Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) religiosity on Friday, jesting that the Jewish Independent senator was as Jewish as a “ham sandwich.”
Shapiro, who identifies as a practicing Orthodox Jew, tweeted, “Bernie Sanders is approximately as Jewish as a ham sandwich topped with shrimp on lard bread.”
Sanders, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, became the first Jewish American to win a presidential primary in February 2016, although he is neither observant nor did he mention his religion often during his runs for president.
Shapiro’s jab and attempt to redefine Sanders using non-Kosher food items was quickly met with a Twitter fact check. “Sen. Sanders grew up in Brooklyn, a son of Jewish immigrants. His father, Elias, emigrated from Poland in 1921 at 17. Sen. Sanders learned during an appearance on the PBS show Finding Your Roots that he had family killed during the Holocaust,” read the “added context” Twitter affixed to Shapiro’s tweet.
Shapiro went after Sanders in the wake of the Vermont senator allowing Rep. Rashida Tlaib (R-MI) to use the Senate hearing room for the committee he chairs to host an event marking the Nakba. Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress, held the event in the Senate after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) refused to allow it to be held in the House chambers. The Nakba, Arabic for ‘catastrophe,’ is what many Palestinians call the creation of the state of Israel and the marking of it is an act of protest against Israel. McCarthy slammed Tlaib for hosting the event, calling it “wrong for members of Congress to traffic in antisemitic tropes about Israel.”
Sanders did not attend the event held in his Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee room. The ranking member on the committee, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), ripped the event, saying, “I wholeheartedly disapprove of the Majority permitting the use of the HELP Committee room for this divisive event. The Capitol Grounds should not be used as a pedestal to legitimize anti-Semitic bigotry.”
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt also condemned the event, tweeting, “It is disgraceful that [Sanders] allowed this event by [Tlaib] to be held in our nation’s Capitol. Real conversations are needed around a path to peace, but not with groups & individuals who espouse antisemitism.”
