On Meet The Press, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus made the situation worse by expressing no regrets over the Trump administration’s decision not to mention Jews in their Holocaust Remembrance Day statement.
Video:
WH stmt on Holocaust Remembrance Day didn’t explicitly mention Jews.@Reince: “I don’t regret the words, Chuck.” pic.twitter.com/DylUuobHbl
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 29, 2017
Transcript via Meet The Press:
CHUCK TODD:
But you– So you don’t– But you don’t regret the statement. You don’t regret the words that were chosen in the statement and the words–
REINCE PRIEBUS:
I don’t regret the words, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
–that were not included?
REINCE PRIEBUS:
I’m trying to clear it up for you. I mean, everyone’s suffering in the Holocaust including obviously all of the Jewish people affected and the miserable genocide that occurred is something that we consider to be extraordinarily sad and something that can never be forgotten and something that if we could wipe it off of the history books we could. But we can’t. And it’s terrible. I mean, I don’t know what more to tell you.
Priebus clarified the White House position that the Holocaust was really bad for a lot of people, including Jews, but the Trump administration doesn’t regret leaving Jews out of their statement because you know, the Holocaust was sad and stuff.
The Chief of Staff’s comments were an example of one of the fatal character flaws of the Trump administration. Instead of saying, ‘we regret not being more specific with our words,’ or something similar, Priebus had to defend the statement from the White House and in the process, made the White House look even worse.
The Muslim ban has dominated the news, but we shouldn’t forget that the aura of bigotry surfaced earlier in the day with the administration’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement.
Jewish-Americans aren’t likely to find much comfort in Priebus’s answer, and his defense of omitting Jews from the statement raises more questions about motives and beliefs of those in the Trump administration.