A recently appointed aide at the U.S. Department of Labor, Leif Olson, resigned late last week after a 2016 Facebook post that appeared to be anti-Semitic was reported by Bloomberg.
Olson, 43, began at the department’s Wage and Hour Division on Aug. 12 after being cleared by the White House as a senior policy adviser to be part of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. He resigned on Friday.
The Facebook post under fire, Olson told Bloomberg, “was sarcastic criticism of the alt-right’s conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic positions.” The post was in response to then-U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan defeating alt-right and anti-Semitic activist Paul Nehlen in the Republican primary in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional district.
Olson said Ryan “suffered a massive, historic, emasculating 70-point victory.”
In comments, Olson wrote, “Neo-cons are all Upper East Side Zionists who don’t golf on Saturday if you know what I mean” and, in response to a comment that falsely claimed that Ryan is Jewish, replied, “It must be true because I’ve never seen the Lamestream Media report it, and you know they protect their own.”
The Bloomberg piece was criticized by both sides of the ideological spectrum from Vox and Trump critic Jonathan Chait to Washington Examiner editor Philip Klein and National Review senior writer Michael Dougherty.
