Rep. Eric Swalwell took Rep. Jim Jordan to task over his past tolerance of antisemitic statements during a Wednesday hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. Jordan, the committee’s chairman, convened the hearing to debate free speech on college campuses and discuss recent collegiate protests related to Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
After Jordan (R-Ohio) referenced antisemitism on campuses, Swalwell (D-Calif.) brought up a tweet from the House Judiciary GOP’s X (formerly Twitter) account, which is controlled by Jordan. On Oct. 6 of last year, the account tweeted: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” Days before the tweet, Kanye West (who now goes by Ye) had presented t-shirts with the slogan “White Lives Matter” at his Yeezy fashion show in Paris, drawing widespread condemnation. Shortly after the post, Ye spiraled into a weeks-long antisemitic meltdown, during which he accused fellow rapper Diddy of being controlled by Jewish people, threatened to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” claimed Jews controlled the music industry, and struck up a friendship with notorious antisemite and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
It wasn’t until 56 days later, when Ye appeared in Alex Jones’s InfoWars show and proclaimed his love for Adolf Hitler, that the House Judiciary quietly deleted its tweet praising him — despite members of Congress and other prominent Jewish organizations urging him to delete the tweet.
Swalwell read out some of Ye’s statements before the Judiciary Committee..
“Mr. Chairman, I want to be, just today, your accountability partner, your online accountability partner, and just go through your social media,” Swalwell said, throwing in an apparent reference to reports that the newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson and his son are “accountability partners” who monitor each other’s inappropriate online activity.
“If we’re going to have a hearing about antisemitism we can’t allow a tweet like this to be posted on our side or your side,” Swalwell added. “This committee should have a conversation in a hearing about antisemitism. But I would first insist that the chairman – I don’t know why he put this tweet up — either he believes it, which I hope is not the case, or he just wanted to own the libs. And if that’s what you’re doing, you’re hurting a lot of people by keeping that tweet up for so long. Especially knowing what it represents.”
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