Another Failed Smear Campaign Against President Trump’s Well-Qualified Nominees

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On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing for Second Circuit Court nominee, Steven Menashi. Menashi’s confirmation has been mired in controversy thanks to a variety of smears from the liberal media.

Fox News has the details:

President Trump’s pick for a seat on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals adamantly denied that he harbors racist beliefs or favors “racial purity” during his confirmation hearing Wednesday morning, as he responded to inflammatory accusations against him.

During questioning, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., observed that nominee Steven Menashi has faced “unusually personal” and “vicious” attacks of this nature, alluding to a segment on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show in which she discussed a law journal article Menashi wrote in 2010, titled “Ethnonationalism and Liberal Democracy.” Maddow cited Menashi’s use of the term “ethnonationalism” to suggest he is aligned with white nationalists, alleging he’s on the “fringe of racial thinking.”

“I absolutely am not,” Menashi said. “It’s hurtful and I think it misrepresents what I’ve written.”

The article, published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, was about how Israel can be both a Jewish state and a liberal democracy. In that context, he explained how there is a precedent for democratic countries to have a common ethnicity, with shared qualities and ties to that people’s diaspora.

When asked about the article during the hearing, Menashi said he was merely saying Israel is not out of the norm. He said he was not proposing the U.S. should have an ethnically homogeneous society, but noted that U.S. citizens do have a shared identity based on “constitutional traditions.”

Menashi said not only is he not a proponent of “racial purity,” he is particularly sensitive to ethnic or religious discrimination because his family members were victims of such persecution. He is the descendant of Iraqi Jews, and his paternal grandparents fled Iraq after Kurdish neighbors helped smuggle his grandmother out of her city.

From there, the family went to Iran, and his father was born in Tehran. They eventually fled that country “because they could not trust the courts to be impartial,” as they would not accept testimony from Jews.

Menashi said that on his mother’s side, his grandfather escaped Ukraine and fled to Poland, eventually making his way to the Bronx. Relatives who remained in Europe were murdered in the Holocaust.

Maddow overplayed her hand on this one. In the left’s efforts to stop President Trump’s amazing judicial record, they concocted a smear campaign too obvious to believe.