In general, do you feel like writers there feel like they can criticize Trump? Kushner definitely did not read the article before I put it up. Does he have any oversight on these type of things?Īre you aware of any policies about writing about Trump at the Observer? I'm sure you don't deal with Kushner much at all. But I will say this, after I pressed send and tweeted it out, I was sort of shaking. Well, once I got Ken's permission, I wasn't super worried. Were you worried at all that you might get in trouble or fired? So Monday morning I emailed the editor-in-chief of the paper, Ken Kurson, and asked if I could write a piece about the anti-Semitism I often get in response to Trump tweets, and he sent back, minutes later, a reply that just said, "Go." So I wrote it and published it.Įditor's note: Ken Kurson is also a contributor to Esquire. I was basically building this argument in my head all weekend: I can't believe this is the state of things I can't believe we have a political candidate that's so blatantly signaling to white supremacists. Then, to see the response from Trump's campaign for tweeting out such a clear dog whistle to hateful people: You're reading too much into it, it's just a sheriff's badge. And horrible anti-Semitic harassments, the likes of which I've never seen. I then got a wave of anti-Semitic tweets back from a lot of Trump supporters, to be perfectly frank. I tweeted about it, which was going to be the extent of my coverage because I'm an arts and culture writer. I really wasn't planning on writing about it at all. When did you decide you were going to write on it? And how did that discussion go at the Observer? Yeah, that wasn't really very believable, the sheriff thing.
NEW YORK OBSERVER DANA SCHWARTZ PC
I was ashamed that Donald Trump was a major party candidate, then doubled down by blaming the liberal media and PC culture for misinterpreting a sheriff's badge. I thought it was an incredibly racist tweet. I think Trevor Noah said it really well when he said a cross is also a symbol, and it's not racist unless it's set on fire and on a black person's lawn. That's a tremendously clear, blatant symbol. It's a six-pointed star on a bed of money with accusations of fiscal irresponsibility. People argue, "Oh, what, just because it's a six-pointed star?" I think that's an incredibly ignorant argument.
I definitely saw it as anti-Semitic symbolism. What was the first thing you thought when you saw the tweet? Schwartz: Yeah, that's one way to put it! We contacted Schwartz, whose piece has since gone viral, to talk about her story. On Wednesday, Kushner himself took the rare step of writing a piece for the Observer, defending Trump against accusations of racism and essentially blaming the media and PC culture. "hen you stand silent and smiling in the background, his Jewish son-in-law, you're giving his most hateful supporters tacit approval," Schwatz wrote in an open letter to Kushner. On Monday, s he called out her boss under the banner of his own publication. Schwartz immediately criticized the original tweet when she saw it, then, for her troubles, was rewarded with a doubling down of anti-Semitic invective from Trump supporters. Dana Schwartz of the New York Observer, the paper owned by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, was one such writer.
In the days that followed, many journalists and Twitter users commented on Trump's head-scratching use of the so-called "sherriff's star." Jewish writers (or those with even vaguely "Jewish-sounding names," as Twitter eggs would say) were met with waves of online abuse after voicing their opinions. No, not everyone who supports Trump is a white supremacist, but just about every white supremacist supports Trump. Given Trump's regular dallying with the underbelly of white supremacists online, the events of this past weekend appeared to be a piece of a larger pattern. As almost anyone outside of the Trump circle of semiotics will tell you, sometimes a star isn't just a star.
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