The questions that Kamala Harris’s campaign asked Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro about the Jewish governor’s possible ties to Israel to vet him as a potential vice presidential candidate were both “totally appropriate and totally inappropriate,” according to former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
Shapiro, who is Jewish, found questions about his ties to Israel offensive. Emanuel, who, like Shapiro, has been mentioned as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, said he had undergone background checks before becoming White House chief of staff under then-President Barack Obama, a senior adviser to then-President Bill Clinton and an ambassador to Japan under then-President Joe Biden.
Shapiro and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz were the finalists for the vice-presidential nomination to run with Harris on the Democratic ticket.
But Shapiro said in his new book that he took offense at being asked, “Had I been a double agent for Israel?” and whether he had communicated with an undercover Israeli agent.
“I wondered whether these questions were being posed to just me—the only Jewish guy in the running—or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way,” the governor wrote.
Emanuel said that the investigators had no choice, even if the questions were inartful.
“If you don’t ask, given the trips that Walz makes to China and Gov. Shapiro’s background, if you don’t ask them, you will have not done your job of ‘vetting,’” Emanuel said at a meeting with Washington political reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
“On the other hand, it’s kind of self-evident,” he said. “How would you know you’re dealing with a double agent? The question asked like that—not artful, but you have to ask.”
During the session, Emanuel also said that U.S. President Donald Trump should use the power of the presidency to speak out against the rise in Jew-hatred.
“The presidency comes with a tool called the bully pulpit,” he said. “Right now it’s being exercised—all of the bully with none of the pulpit. This is a moment to actually bring people together now.”
Anti-semitism has always existed, but now it is more “acted on and expressed, and that is a different phenomenon,” Emanuel said. “It went from implicit to explicit, and there has to be a full condemnation.”
