Rahm Emanuel believes the vetting process of Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), in which he was asked if he was a double agent for Israel by former Vice President Kamala Harris’s team, was both “totally inappropriate” and “totally appropriate.”
The former mayor of Chicago, who is himself Jewish, underwent extensive vetting as former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and a former ambassador to Japan under former President Joe Biden. He said he understood the Harris team’s need for thoroughness while vetting candidates such as Shapiro, a Jewish American, and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), who was asked about his ties to China.
“If you don’t ask, given the trips that Walz makes to China and Gov. Shapiro’s background, you’ll have not done your job of ‘vetting,’” Emanuel said during The Monitor Breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor at the St. Regis hotel in downtown Washington. “On the other hand, it’s kind of self-evident how you know you were a double agent.”
HARRIS CAMPAIGN ASKED JOSH SHAPIRO IF HE WAS AN ISRAELI AGENT, NEW MEMOIR REVEALS
He continued: “So the phrasing of the question was not artful, as told by Tim Walz and Gov. Shapiro. But you have to ask. I mean, I was asked many questions by our security team before I got the security clearance as President Obama’s chief of staff.”
Shapiro revealed the questioning from Harris’s team in his forthcoming memoir, Where We Keep the Light. According to Shapiro, Dana Remus, a former White House counsel, asked him: “Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?”
“Was she kidding?” Shapiro wrote. “I told her how offensive the question was.”
Walz was also reportedly questioned over the trips he took to China before he ran for office and whether he was an agent for the Chinese Communist Party.
Harris ultimately chose Walz as her running mate over Shapiro, who is widely seen as a possible 2028 contender. But the anecdote brings to light the tensions the Democratic Party faces over support for Israel amid rising antisemitism.
“I’m probably not right to answer this question, because I kind of understand ‘vetting’ and security background. If the question was, have you ever talked to a senior agent of [former Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad, in this case, how would you know?” Emanuel said. “But I understand the impetus of a vetting question to understand any political or otherwise liabilities.”
Emanuel added that anti-semitism has long persisted irrespective of party affiliation. “It’s not like anti-semitism showed up two years ago. Anti-semitism has been around for a really long time,” he said.
Although Emanuel insists he has not decided on whether he will run for president in 2028, he told reporters he will travel to Michigan, an important battleground state, in the upcoming weeks.
He claimed he was impressed by what Michigan has done on the vocational level because education is “the ticket to how we fix this country, piece by piece.”
Seizing on the populist fervor that has swept both parties, Emanuel chastized the “elite” for not apologizing for being held accountable for several disastrous moments for the American people, a sign that he may be laying down the groundwork to run for the presidency in 2028.
“The war in Iraq, the financial meltdown, China’s decision to change from competition to adversary, and COVID. The one common thing: the elite to the establishment walk out great, and everybody else gets left with the bag,” he said.