Sanders: 'Entire world is watching' Trump and Bannon’s reaction to anti-Semitism

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Monday that the “entire world is watching” the reaction of President Donald Trump and his chief strategist Steve Bannon to the waves of anti-Semitic bomb threats and vandalisms across the country.

Sanders said since Trump's election there has been “a significant outbreak of anti-Semitism in our country,” saying he was “alarmed” by the string of bomb threats targeting Jewish Community Centers across the country and Jewish cemetery vandalisms in Philadelphia and St. Louis during the past two weeks.


“These attacks must be condemned at the highest levels of government,” Sanders said during his address to J Street, a group promoting the two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He then mentioned the controversy surrounding the absence of a reference to Jews in White House’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, calling it “rather extraordinary.”

“I hope very much that President Trump and his political adviser Mr. Bannon understand that the entire world is watching, that it is imperative that their voices be loud and clear in condemning anti-Semitism,” he said.

He added that Trump and Bannon should condemn violent attacks against other minority groups, including immigrants, invoking the shooting of two Indian men in Kansas last week.

The Vermont senator added he found it “very troubling” that Trump bragged about his Electoral College victory when asked at a recent press conference about anti-Semitism in the United States.

“What has always been the function of the president, is to bring us together, not divide us up,” Sanders said.