"If I ran for President and once was a member of the Klan wouldn't you call me on it the way I call you on Farrakhan." Lou Reed, Good Evening, Mr Waldheim.
Rep. Keith Ellison, the vice chair of the DNC, is coming under fire over new revelations of ties to Farrakhan. The top Democrat had an extensive history of ties to the Nation of Islam which he has lied about it in the past. But now new more recent revelations have emerged. And these include a possible visit to Farrakhan's hotel room.
Ellison attended at least three meetings where Farrakhan was present — including a private visit to Farrakhan’s hotel room — according to photos and videos reviewed by TheDC and Farrakhan’s own statements.
Instead of addressing the issue, Rep. Keith Ellison decided to borrow Harvey Weinstein's defense.
Asked about Farrakhan’s claim, Ellison spokesman Karthik Ganapathy released a statement criticizing the media without addressing the meeting Farrakhan says happened in his hotel suite.
“Rep. Ellison has advocated a pluralistic, peaceful and broadly prosperous vision for our nation’s future his entire career, and the idea that matters less than whether or not he was once upon a time standing near somebody is an insane symptom of how our country’s political media coverage is so broken,” he said. “Rep. Ellison knows Minnesotans understand that standing in a room doesn’t mean you endorse every view of everyone else in that room, and wishes the space being used to print this story was instead spent calling more attention to the scourge of white nationalist gun violence, or the deportation threat facing hundreds of thousands of young immigrants across our country.”
The media has spent far more time on any one of those issues than it has discussing whether the vice chair of the DNC has ties to a racist hate group. There's room to discuss both.
But kudos to Keith for appropriating the Harvey Weinstein "I'm going to focus on fighting the NRA" defense.