MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-10-09 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout - NYLXS] Fwd: NY Times slant
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brooklynpaper.com
Borough Park protests spurred by Trump campaign, Cuomo alleges
By Todd Maisel
4-5 minutes
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Demonstrations in Borough Park over new COVID-19 regulations were
politically-motivated rallies fueled by President Donald Trump’s
campaign rather than genuine protests over the new rules, Gov. Andrew
Cuomo argued on Friday.
“[President Trump] exploits divisions … I also believe his campaign is
fomenting the ultra-Orthodox in Brooklyn,” Cuomo said.
The two nights of chaos in Borough Park came after Cuomo announced he
was closing schools and limiting religious gatherings to 10 people in
COVID-19 hotspots. Some of the city’s highest rates of COVID-19 are in
Orthodox communities, with Borough Park’s daily positivity rate of more
than eight percent as of Friday.
At the demonstrations, protesters blasted the synagogue restrictions as
arbitrary and even discriminatory — particularly since they came in the
middle of the Jewish high holidays.
Some attendees, who danced in the streets holding Trump flags, got
violent towards Hasidic dissenters, critically injuring one man who was
filming the scene, and attacking a reporter.
Heshy Tischler, a bombastic radio personality who helped organize the
demonstrations, said on Twitter that he will be arrested on Monday for
inciting violence on the reporter.
During a conference call with reporters, Cuomo suggested that the outcry
was a stunt among local Trump supporters connected, in some manner, to
the campaign itself.
borough park
Heshy Tischler will be arrested on Monday for inciting an attack on a
reporter, he said.Photo by Todd Maisel
Cuomo played an excerpt of a robocall that purportedly went out to homes
in Borough Park. The message claimed that community leaders had recently
been in touch with representatives of the Trump campaign, who had called
for a rally against Cuomo.
“Come to 13th Avenue and hold big signs — ‘Cuomo killed thousands’ — as
many as possible, as big as possible,” said the unidentified speaker on
the robocall. “The Trump campaign is urging us to hold as many and as
big signs as possible. Please send this message around. Make it go viral.”
“The more signs we have, the bigger the national outcry will be,” the
speaker said.
Cuomo also read off a tweet from local activist Heshy Tischler, whose
name was also mentioned in the robocall, published on Oct. 7. In the
tweet, Tischler asked, “Urgent: who can print ‘Cuomo hates Jews’ and
‘Cuomo killed thousands’ on flags?”
Tischler wore a shirt at the Oct. 7 protest with a Trump bumper sticker
on the front, and posted a short video on his Twitter account the next
day showing signs with messages similar to what was heard in the robocall.
Cuomo called the alleged link between the demonstrations and the Trump
campaign as “ugly, divisive, poisonous, disgusting, painful.” He
suggested that Tischler and others involved in organizing the protests
were participating in Trump’s “divide and conquer” strategy, fomenting
division in the community.
“There is no question that the president of the United States is a
divisive force,” Cuomo said. “His campaign was premised on division. His
campaign was the oldest political strategy in the book, used by the
Roman empire: divide and conquer.”
The governor said these actions also undermined efforts to get COVID-19
under control in a community overwhelmed by new cases — putting the
lives of their neighbors in jeopardy.
“Here the Trump campaign wants to inflame division. Meanwhile, they’re
putting lives at risk,” Cuomo charged. “What’s the Trump campaign
saying? Play politics. It’s disgusting.”
A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told the Daily News in an email
that the campaign “had no involvement with this.”
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