'Bloodcurdling' and 'Anti-Semitic': Media Targets Trump Judicial Nominee with Pro-Israel Beliefs

Steven Menashi, a new Trump judicial nominee, is facing backlash from CNN and MSNBC over some of his old articles. 

Many conservatives say it's a smear attack on a well-qualified judge.  

"The author of this slightly bloodcurdling very serious law review article is Steve Menashi. The reason you know it is because Donald Trump just nominated him to be a federal appeals court judge," said MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.

"You might wonder how the Trump administration finds the academic drum major for ethnonationalism to become a federal appeals court nominee, one level below the Supreme Court. I tend to think that in politics these people on this fringe of racial thinking tend to find each other like magnets and iron filings do," she said. 

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal is defending Menashi against this attack and others. 

"Rachel Maddow opened the assault this month with an MSNBC monologue suggesting Mr. Menashi is a white nationalist. Her evidence?" the board wrote in an op-ed.  It's an article Menashi wrote in 2010 for a University of Pennsylvania international law journal defended Israel as a "liberal democracy and Jewish state."

Carrie Severino, chief counsel, and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network told CBN News "Faith Nation" that CNN took what Menashi wrote in earlier papers "out of context."

"Subsequently CNN had several attacks on things he wrote while an editor at Dartmouth for the conservative campus paper there," she explained. "Taking them out of context and blowing up what were in fact really thoughtful pieces addressing some of the hot button issues on campus. They're just trying to again, smear him based on these old writings. It's not fair and it's really a concern that this is the type of personal attacks that are going on against these nominees."

Severino noted attacks on conservative judicial nominees are becoming more common. 

"It seems to be like a repeating process here. We saw it with Amy Coney Barrett, for example. That was the anti-Catholic attack," she noted. "Now we're getting into more of the anti-Semitic attacks. This is really unfortunate, not to mention Justice Brett Kavanaugh who endured a horrible smear campaign last year."

The headline on an Aug. 22 op-ed in the National Review penned by Severino, read: "Another Trump Judicial Nominee, Another Smear."

The headline was followed by a six-word sentence: "This is starting to get old." 

Severino writes that "the big lie" is the only weapon his (Trump's) opponents have left since truth is their enemy.