The Jewish husband of former vice president Kamala Harris criticized the move, saying that “Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized.”
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed Doug Emhoff, the Jewish husband of Kamala Harris, the rival he trounced in the recent presidential elections, from the Holocaust Memorial Council on Tuesday.
Emhoff was among several Democrats appointed to the Council by former president Joe Biden who were taken off the board at the same time, including Ron Klain, Biden’s Jewish White House chief of staff.
Emhoff, who used his prominent position as Second Gentleman, when his wife was Biden’s vice president, to speak out against antisemitism, criticized the move in a statement to The New York Times.
“Today, I was informed of my removal from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council,” Emhoff wrote. “Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized. To turn one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue is dangerous — and it dishonors the memory of six million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve.”
Along with many other Democratic Trump critics, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer leaped to slam the termination.
“It is despicable that Trump would use a hallowed institution like the Holocaust Museum to take cheap shots at his perceived political enemies,” he wrote on social media.
“Remembering the Shoah and the lessons of the Shoah is a solemn duty best accomplished in a way that transcends petty partisanship and politics. This is anything but,” he added.
The condemnations ignore the fact that new administrations generally dismiss political appointees of their rival party from departments across the government as a matter of course. In the first few weeks of Biden’s term, hundreds of Republicans were fired from 42 defense advisory boards alone.
In addition, several months later, in what the House Committee on Oversight and Reform called an “unprecedented” move by any president that could even be illegal, all 18 Trump-appointed board members of the air force, military and naval academies were asked to resign or were terminated.
The reason given for their dismissal at the time by then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki was “to ensure” that those serving on the boards “are qualified” and “aligned with your values.”
Trump has worked tirelessly against antisemitism since his first days in office, directing special attention to top universities where pro-Palestinian activists have spewed hatred and threatened Jewish students on their campuses. The president ordered a freeze on billions of dollars in federal funding to those institutions.
He also immediately ordered the free flow of armaments to the Jewish state that the Biden administration had slow-walked in an attempt to shape Israel’s war against Hamas since the massacre of October 7, 2023.
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