In a forceful op-ed in his own New York Observer on Wednesday, publisher Jared Kushner fought back against accusation that his father-in-law, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, is an “anti-Semite” for tweeting a meme of Hillary Clinton that featured a Star of David and hundred dollar bills. “Donald Trump is not anti-Semitic and he’s not a racist,” Kushner wrote in the piece. “Despite the best efforts of his political opponents and a large swath of the media to hold Donald Trump accountable for the utterances of even the most fringe of his supporters—a standard to which no other candidate is ever held—the worst that his detractors can fairly say about him is that he has been careless in retweeting imagery that can be interpreted as offensive.” The article was a direct rebuke to an open letter published on the paper’s website the day before by writer Dana Schwartz, who challenged Kushner to denounce the campaign’s anti-Semitic streak. Instead, the publisher only defended Trump.
