Curt Schilling, erstwhile baseballer, Keeper of the Bloody Sock, and ESPN talking head loves Donald Trump. He loves him so much, in fact, that he’s announced that he’ll be running against Elizabeth Warren in 2018 for her Massachusetts Senate seat, testing the loyalties of liberal Red Sox fans, from the Berkshires to the Back Bay. Appearing on The Lead with Jake Tapper, Schilling, who’s now lent his voice to Breitbart radio (surprise, surprise), didn’t bring his #MAGA hat to the segment. But he did have a ridiculous question for Tapper, who at this point has perfected his REALLY?! face: What’s with Jews backing Democrats?
“As a person who’s practicing the Jewish faith, and has been since you were young,” Schilling said, “I don’t understand how people of the Jewish faith can back the Democratic Party.” And he rambled on from there.
Schilling, who campaigned for George Bush in 2004, has, in the last few years, argued against evolution; been suspended from ESPN for comparing Muslims to Nazis; defaulted on a $75 million loan from the state of Rhode Island and laid off 450 employees while decrying the influence of “big government” in business; and been given the permanent canning from ESPN for an anti-transgender Facebook post. (Schilling, to be fair, has been a long-time advocate for ALS and other causes.)
Knowing all of those things that have come out of his mouth—in addition to the fact that he’s admittedly an “amateur, non-politician,” as he stated to Tapper—isn’t it fair to now put this singularly silly question of Jews and the Democratic Party to bed? Schilling waves vaguely at “the last 50 years” of Democratic policy as indicative of “anti-Jewish Israel” sentiment, and yet doesn’t come up with a single example of what exactly he’s referring to. (Also, he calls the Jewish state “Iz-reel.”)
Curt Schilling has done us all an enormous favor. This idea that the Democratic Party is chomping at the bit to endanger and/or abandon Israel is pretty much baseless (Exhibit A: President Obama, a democrat, and the recent MOU between the U.S. and Israel). And if your co-belligerent on that side of the argument is this guy, maybe it’s time to reevaluate what exactly you’re arguing.
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Jesse Bernstein is a former Intern at Tablet.
