Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, linked the “hate” which led to the Holocaust to parents speaking out at school board meetings on Wednesday during the South by Southwest conference (SXSW), a weeklong event on civic engagement and media.
During a conversation about antisemitism with MSNBC’s Symone Sanders-Townsend, Emhoff shared stories of meeting Ukrainian refugees and survivors of the Holocaust, a video posted to Twitter showed. Emhoff said the “hate” that caused the Holocaust is “interconnected” to the “hate [in America] you see just going to a school meeting.” (RELATED: Teachers Union Runs Ad Calling Conservative Parents ‘Extremists’)
“I met one woman who was saved in the Holocaust in Germany, settled in Ukraine and is now a refugee again back in Berlin where she originally left as a Jew in the Holocaust,” Emhoff said. “These are the stories that are happening out there, and so this stuff is so important. This hate is interconnected, you see it in the discourse in the country right now. You see it in the divide that we have. Just going to the school meetings, you see that hate that is out there. We’ve got to step up and speak out and we’ve got to call out the cowards out there, people as my wife likes to say ‘these-so-called leaders,’ but she’s right. Because you can’t be in leadership if you’re not going to lead.”
Parents across the country are voicing their opposition at school board meetings to Critical Race Theory (CRT) lessons and policies that hide a student’s gender transition from their parents; a group of parents in Wisconsin are suing a school board that allegedly enabled a “Gender Support Plan” that hides a student’s transgender status from parents. In Loudoun County, Virginia, a parent was arrested because he refused to leave a school board meeting after protesting CRT and the district’s transgender policy.
Doug Emhoff says the “hate” that led to the Holocaust is “interconnected” to the “hate [in America] you see just going to a school meeting.” pic.twitter.com/wvNAsFrz3O
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 15, 2023
In 2021, the National School Boards Association sent a letter to the Biden administration comparing parents at school board meetings to “domestic terrorists.” Attorney General Merrick Garland then directed the FBI to “use its authority” on parents who pose a threat and disrupt school board meetings.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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