Jamie Raskin On MSNBC Wants To Know ‘Where Does Elise Stefanik Get Off’ Lecturing ‘Jewish College President’ At Anti-Semitism Hearing

Maryland Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin said “lax Republican gun laws” are the reason it’s concerning when someone advocates the genocide of Jews on a college campus, but was more concerned on MSNBC Sunday with where New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik “gets off” asking anyone about anti-Semitism when she continues to support Donald Trump.

Raskin joined MSNBC host Ali Velshi on Sunday, and the subject of the House committee hearing on campus anti-Semitism came up.

Raskin first brought up Stefanik and the hearing in answer to a question about the “threat to Democracy” posed, as Velshi and he agree, by Donald Trump and all Republican politicians and voters.

After some further discussion, Velshi circled back to the hearing and the university presidents who faced intense backlash from the public and from both sides of the aisle in D.C., but not from Saturday Night Live, mentioning University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill’s resignation and saying that there could yet be further fallout at Harvard and MIT.

“How should we be thinking about this?” he asked the congressman.

Raskin did not criticize the university presidents, but only answered that, as a father, he would hope a college president would take action when someone is calling for genocide on campus “especially in the age of the AR-15,” because “lax Republican gun laws” mean “we’ve got to take very seriously” people making threats.

“Having said that, where does Elise Stefanik get off of lecturing anybody about anti-Semitism when she’s the hugest supporter of Donald Trump who traffics in anti-Semitism all the time?” he then added. “She didn’t utter a peep of protest when he had Kanye West and Nick Fuentes over for dinner. Nick Fuentes, who doubts whether October 7th even took place because he thinks it was some kind of suspicious propaganda move by the Israelis.”

“And the Republican Party is filled with people who are entangled with antisemitism like that,” he said. “And yet somehow she gets on her high horse and lectures a Jewish college president from MIT.”

Velshi was also joined by a former Palestinian Authority spokesperson over the weekend who said that the United States has “aided and abetted genocide” by supporting Israel’s actions in response to the horrific October 7 terror attack, but who did not condemn or even mention that attack during the interview.

Well, I’m thinking about is a father, as a parent. I mean, my kids have been sent to college at great expense, like, you know, millions of people across the country. I want to know that if somebody is actually calling for the genocide of the Jews or anybody else on campus, that we’ve got a college president who will say, quickly get campus police over there, that person could be a danger to other people around them.

Especially in the age of the AR-15 when we’ve had, you know, genocidal style language being used, but also massacres taking place like at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh or at the Buffalo supermarket. Those are right-wing anti-Semites who talk about the great replacement theory.

We had a guy at Cornell who was making death threats towards Jews, and we had three Palestinian college kids who were shot in Burlington, Vermont, of all places. So, you know, with lax Republican gun laws across the country, we’ve got to take very seriously anybody who’s making any kind of violent threats, especially genocidal threats.

Having said that, where does Elise Stefanik get off of lecturing anybody about anti-Semitism when she’s the hugest supporter of Donald Trump who traffics in anti-Semitism all the time? She didn’t utter a peep of protest when he had Kanye West and Nick Fuentes over for dinner. Nick Fuentes, who doubts whether October 7th even took place because he thinks it was some kind of suspicious propaganda move by the Israelis. And the Republican Party is filled with people who are entangled with antisemitism like that. And yet somehow she gets on her high horse and lectures a Jewish college president from MIT.

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.