I Pressed a Trump Nominee to Denounce Past Holocaust Statements

Trump’s nominee for Ambassador to Slovakia, Doug Mastriano, has compared abortion and his gubernatorial campaign loss to the Holocaust and has kept close ties to a known Holocaust conspiracy theorist. Mastriano has also called the separation of church and state a myth, and has parroted conspiracy theories about 9/11. During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, I asked him about these comments. Here’s our exchange:

Me: Mr. Mastriano, in October 2022, your wife said at one of your campaign events that the two of you “probably love Israel more than a lot of Jews do.” Yes or no, do you agree with that statement?

Mastriano: Both Rebbie and I have a deep love and appreciation for the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.

Me: I appreciate that. So can you confirm that you’ve repeatedly compared things to the Holocaust, such as abortion or your loss to Governor Shapiro? Just a yes or no, have you compared those things to the Holocaust?

Mastriano: I have been working closely with the Jewish community for Senate Bill 127 in Pennsylvania to institute Holocaust education across the state, and I think any use of comparisons is unwise.

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Me: So you’re saying you didn’t make those statements?

Mastriano: No, I think it diminishes, and today I would not do that.

Me: So you made the statements but you are renouncing the statements.

Mastriano: There was a social media post that I would not post today, I think anything that uses the Holocaust to make a modern comparison is unwise.

Me: Well, I appreciate that because you will be representing the United States in Slovakia, where nearly 69,000 Slovak Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, over 75% of the entire Slovak Jewish population, and so we have to be sure that you will represent this country. We know that you’ve maintained a relationship with Andrew Torba, founder of extremist social platform Gab. Gab became notorious after the gunman who murdered 11 worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue posted his manifesto there. And so despite his documented history of antisemitism, the rhetoric, the Holocaust denialism, your campaign paid Gab for promotional services. I want to finish with this for now, you can denounce your past associations with antisemites, you can point to your support of Israel, but for me I’m not sure that neither excuses you or erases the record.

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