“People judge you by the company you keep.”
I was in high school when my father gave me that bit of advice. And while that may not always be a fair thing, it’s certainly true. Whether it’s video of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump leering at women at a party and making jokes or Lauren Boebert’s flirtations with III% militia members, we as onlookers are left to frequently draw our own conclusions (or in the case of Boebert, maybe she helps steer an insurrection and makes it easy for us), and they usually won’t be positive ones.
And speaking of Lauren Boebert, it turns out she has a fan in our four-corners-neighboring Arizona in the form of Wendy Rogers, the State Senator from Legislative District 6 whose Twitter bio reads, “Conservative America First Pro-Trump Republican in #LD6. Air Force pilot, biz entrepreneur, homeschool mom. #MAGA #AmericaFirst.”
Last week, Rogers popped on over to the TruNews Network to be interviewed by Lauren Witzke.
For those who need a refresher, TruNews is unabashedly Jew-hating in their steady drumbeat of antisemitic canards and slurs. Just check out some of their work:
- “Jew Coup: Seditious Jews Orchestrating Trump Impeachment Lynching.”
- “Jewish Racial Supremacy: Israeli Rabbi Says Jews Born to Rule over Goy.”
- “The secret alliance between Israel and the Kurds, and how that deep seated friendship, including a shared history involving a Talmudic prophecy where King Solomon directed demons to have sex with Jewish women”
From a Media Matters article on June 23:
TruNews is an antisemitic network that regularly promotes toxic rhetoric, as Right Wing Watch has documented. TruNews claimed that there was a “Jew coup” against former President Donald Trump and that “seditious Jews” were “orchestrating” his “impeachment lynching.” Founder and host Rick Wiles said on the network: “That’s the way the Jews work, they are deceivers, they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda.” He added: “You have been taken over by a Jewish cabal.” Wiles claimed last month that “the American people are being oppressed by Jewish tyrants.”
None of the above is new — Network founder Rick Wiles is well-known to American Jews for his record of Jew hatred. He went on that “Jew Coup” rant on his show back in Nov. of 2019. So it’s more than noteworthy Boebert’s fawning friend Wendy Rogers would not only choose to even appear on the network — but that she’d trumpet her appearance proudly to the world:
Rogers appeared on the show to discuss the ongoing Arizona election audit with Witzke, a Fox-News-styled blonde and failed politician who’s also a QAnon cultist, and — in case that wasn’t enough — a flat-earther (that Rogers was on the network at all may speak more to the fact that legitimate news sources aren’t giving much credence to the audit that continues to give voice to the lie that the 2020 election was rigged).
In the interview, State Senator Rogers openly admits to being a member of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government militia who was seen marching alongside other hate groups like Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists in the ill-named “Million Maga March” last November.
So, while there wasn’t any vocal antisemitism occurring in this particular interview, it remains yet another alarming instance of the mainstreaming of hate groups into state politics, and a brazen example of the growing network that supports them.
The people of Arizona deserve better.
