(JTA) — Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Jewish Democrat, has called on all of the Jewish members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet to resign over his response to the Charlottesville demonstration.
Schatz in an interview Friday evening with MSNBC said in response to a question about whether he thought Jewish Cabinet members should resign in protest, “Yes. I think they have to.”
Schatz also said: “I think people of conscience can’t pretend that this president is something they hoped he would be. That they were hoping he would be competent, that he would be a dealmaker in the middle, a pragmatist. I remember reading an article online at the beginning of the presidency that he was going to function as an executive chairman and allow each one of his Cabinet officials to run the government as they see fit. None of that happened.”
“This person is not capable morally, politically or in terms of incompetencies to lead the free world.”
Schatz had previously tweeted his condemnation of Trump’s Aug. 15 news conference in which the president condemned “both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville, calling the counterprotesters facing down the white supremacist demonstrators the “alt-left.”
“As a Jew, as an American, as a human, words cannot express my disgust and disappointment. This is not my President,” Schatz tweeted.
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