Mr. Ailes Should Apologize

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, yesterday Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, decided that there were Nazis running around a competitor news organization. He called the executives at National Public Radio ``Nazis.'' He said, and I quote, ``They are of course Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view.''

Mr. Ailes also said, after a diatribe against President Obama and against Jon Stewart of Comedy Central, and I quote, ``There are left-wing rabbis who basically don't think that anybody can use the word `Holocaust' on the air.''

Mr. Speaker, I find those words to be very offensive and inappropriate. Relatives of mine were among the millions of Jews and others who died in the Holocaust. At the hands of the Nazis, acts of brutality and mass murder were carried out, the likes of which the world had never seen.

If Mr. Ailes is the president of Fox News and claims to be fair and balanced, he should keep his comments to himself. If he wants to be a commentator, then he should be so. But if he wants to pretend to be a so-called fair and balanced president of a major news organization, he ought to know better than to utter such hateful words.

To use the word ``Holocaust'' in the same sentence that he uses the word ``rabbi,'' although he clearly meant rabbi in another connotation, is doubly offensive. And to use the word ``Holocaust'' cavalierly to connote any situation in which somebody or some group feels aggrieved is offensive again.

Mr. Ailes should apologize for these despicable statements of total insensitivity that should not be connected to a president of a major news organization.

Later today, I will send him a letter demanding that he retract and apologize for these despicable statements.

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