Jewish Republican congressional candidate calls George Soros ‘Nazi sympathizer’
Eric Early tweets false accusation against billionaire megadonor in response to claims of anti-Semitism from Jewish incumbent Adam Schiff
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleBen Sales is a news editor at The Times of Israel
JTA — The latest political candidate to take aim at George Soros, the Jewish billionaire Democratic megadonor, is Jewish himself.
Eric Early, a Republican who is running for US Congress in California, tweeted Sunday, “Nazi sympathizer Soros is a danger to our nation.” Soros, who is a frequent target of Republican officials, in fact survived the Holocaust as a teenager.
The false accusation that Soros aided Nazis is not uncommon among criticism of him, which has become unrelenting in this election cycle and frequently veers into anti-Semitism. In reality, Soros was hidden as a child by a Hungarian bureaucrat and once accompanied him to survey the property of a Jewish household.
The Republican Jewish Coalition confirmed in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Sunday that Early is Jewish. He is running against California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who is also Jewish, in a heavily Democratic district.
To my opponent the pathological Schiff:
• there’s nothing antisemitic at all about the retweet (whoever did it);
• Schiff knows we’re closing in and his tweet show his desperation
• Nazi sympathizer Soros is a danger to our nation. https://t.co/D4sHP59M0s
— ???????????????? ???????????????????? (@EricEarly_CA) October 18, 2020
On Saturday, Schiff criticized Early for sharing a meme that falsely claimed Schiff was related to Soros. He is not. Schiff called the meme anti-Semitic.
“This week, my opponent shared a ‘meme’ about me. A well-circulated anti-Semitic lie,” he tweeted, adding that “the Republican Party’s willingness to traffic in bigotry and hate has caused lasting damage.”
The meme is gone from Early’s Twitter feed, and Early responded to Schiff’s criticism by writing that “there’s nothing antisemitic at all about the retweet (whoever did it).” Early told the Washington Times that Soros is “flat-out scum,” and called Schiff “one of Soros’s many tools.”
A spokesperson for Schiff’s campaign, Patrick Boland, said in a statement in response, “We are glad that Mr. Early deleted his retweet of an anti-Semitic meme, the likes of which should never have shared by a candidate for elected office in the first place.”
The Times of Israel Community.