Josh Mandel, currently the likely leading GOP candidate in Ohio’s race to replace retiring Republican U.S. Senator Rob Portman, is under fire for what some are calling the use of Nazi rhetoric and inciting violence in a video he posted in response to President Joe Biden’s new vaccine policies.
Standing on the side of the road in front of a Trump sign, as he wass “driving through a corn field,” his car lights flashing, and after declaring that President Joe Biden is not the President of the United States, Mandel said of Biden’s vaccine mandate, “I call on my fellow Americans do not comply, do not comply with the tyranny. And when the Gestapo show up at your front door, you know what to do.”
“My blood is boiling,” Mandel said, “in rage at what I’ve seen from the White House today, trampling on our freedom, trampling on our liberty, trampling on what I took an oath to defend when I joined the Marine Corps.”
Mandel was referring to President Biden’s executive order requiring the Dept. of Labor to direct employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or submit negative coronavirus test results weekly. The Marine Corps. requires more than a dozen vaccines when new recruits join.
“Joe Biden, I’m not even going to call him ‘President Biden,’ he is not. Joe Biden is creating a constitutional crisis, because I was driving through this cornfield. I literally came across this sign, this Trump sign, he is my president,” Mandel said.
Many, including one of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations, the American Jewish Committee, blasted Mandel, who is Jewish.
“It’s disgraceful,” the AJC said on Twitter, that Josh Mandel, “whose own people were murdered by Nazis, would use this hateful rhetoric to score political points.”
“This statement is deeply offensive and trivializes the horrors of the Holocaust. Mandel should know better.”
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, the leading Democratic candidate for Senator Portman’s seat, also blasted Mandel:
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes served up a sarcastic rebuke:
Here’s how others are responding: