Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish, demanded that Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) apologize for calling him “Fuhrer,” a term that is associated with Adolf Hitler.
Talking to reporters outside the Senate chamber, Moreno said that “Republicans are independently minded. Democrats are monolithic sheep that follow the Fuhrer Schumer’s orders,” Reuters reported. (JNS sought comment from Moreno.)
“What Sen. Moreno did was absolutely despicable. It’s antisemitic, plain and simple. It’s outrageous,” Schumer said. “I lost lots of people in the Holocaust to Hitler, and for him to use those words, first we demand he apologize immediately but we also demand that his Republican colleagues start denouncing him on something that is so blatantly antisemitic.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, called Moreno’s remarks “despicable and inexcusable.”
The American Jewish Congress stated that “history is not a punchline” and that the senator’s remarks were both “distasteful” and “needlessly provocative and deeply wrong.”
In February, Republican leaders in the Minnesota state Senate sought an apology from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—the former Democratic vice presidential candidate—for saying that the country is being “stolen by fascists and Nazis.” Walz said that he wasn’t calling Republicans “Nazis.”
