How many anti-Semitism scandals can a presidential campaign survive? The Trump campaign has already dealt with one anti-Semitism charge in the most baffling way possible, and now McClatchyDC is reporting that Joseph Schmitz, a Trump foreign policy adviser, has been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks by a former co-worker from his time in the Defense Department.
According to a whistleblower complaint filed by Daniel Meyer, a former Defense Department employee, a former co-worker of Joseph Schmitz alleged that Schmitz's summary of his accomplishments as the Defense Department's inspector general was described with a triumphant "I fired the Jews." The same former co-worker said that Schmitz "allegedly lectured Mr. Crane on the details of concentration camps and how the ovens were too small to kill 6 million Jews."
The claims against Schmitz are also being used as proof by former Army engineer David Tenenbaum that Pentagon officials fostered an anti-Semitic atmosphere that led to harassment against him. Tenenbaum's lawyer wrote in a letter that the Pentagon's "anti-Semitic environment began under a prior Inspector General, Mr. Joseph Schmitz."
Schmitz called the charges defamatory and assured McClatchyDC that he's totally unfamiliar with ever being called an anti-Semite—and that he's married to a Jewish woman. According to the paper, Schmitz then clarified that his wife was "ethnically Jewish" because she has a Jewish grandmother. Just the kind of totally normal statement that people who aren't worryingly obsessed with Jewishness all around them would point out, in a totally normal campaign now being run by the CEO of a far-right web empire.
