JTA Twitter 50: Joel Pollak

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Joel Pollak@JoelPollak

Joel Pollak may be Breitbart News’ best defense against charges that it is ground zero for the nationalist “alt-right.” He is senior editor-at-large at the right-wing website and host of its Sirius XM show — and happens to be a Sabbath-observing Jew.

Pollak first emerged as a public figure in 2010 when he mounted a campaign against U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Jewish Democrat from Illinois who had accepted the endorsement of the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group J Street. (Schakowsky won easily.) But these days he is a prolific tweeter and writer on what he sees as media and liberal hypocrisy, and a good portion of his work focuses on treatment of Israel. Pollak has been a staunch Trump supporter since the 2016 election.

Pollak especially bristles at charges that the folks in his camp are racist. For example, he tried to dismantle claims that Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, was “racist” in tying his opponent, Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar, to terrorists by repeatedly mentioning Campa-Najjar’s PLO terrorist grandfather (whom the candidate disavowed and who died before Campa-Najjar was born). Hunter was merely pointing out facts, Pollak argued.

But he also likes a good argument, and will concede a point, as when Campa-Najjar said that it made little sense for Hunter to tie him, a Christian, to Islamists.

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