Pelosi Says She Knows of No Antisemites Among Democrats, Then Calls Mamdani and El-Sayed's Israel Views 'Wrong'

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked a simple question by a Jewish Democrat this week: is this still your party? Her first answer was that she knows of no antisemites in it. Her second answer, about a minute later, was that two of its biggest new stars are "wrong" about Israel.

The exchange came on the latest episode of On Brand with Donny Deutsch, posted to YouTube on Thursday, Oct. 29, five days before the Nov. 3 midterms. Deutsch, the former ad man and longtime TV host, put it to her plainly.

"I have to talk to you as a lifelong Democrat and as a Jewish man, how concerned I am about the party," Deutsch said. He pointed to Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who "couldn't say who was more of an enemy, Israel or Iran," and to "very vibrant members of the DSA who don't think there should be a Jewish state." Then he asked: "What do you say to a lifelong Jew, a lifelong Democrat, who's a Jew, who just is saying, is this my party anymore?"

"I really do not know of anybody"

Pelosi began with her family. Her father, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., spoke Yiddish in his Baltimore campaign speeches, she recalled, and went to the House floor in early 1943 to warn that Jews were being killed in Europe. "I have more Jewish grandchildren than anybody in Congress," she said.

Deutsch pressed. "It feels like a wing of the party in particular has just abandoned Israel and actually has tones of antisemitism," he said.

"The fact is that I really do not know of anybody there on our side who is engaged in antisemitism," Pelosi answered. "That may be what it appears to be or what it's charged to be, but if they are, it's only a few, if there are. I think sometimes they say things that they shouldn't and can be interpreted that way."

Deutsch then drew the line for her. "When you say Israel doesn't have the right to be a Jewish state, that's antisemitic as far as I'm concerned," he said. "Who says that?" Pelosi asked. "Mamdani has said that," Deutsch answered. "El-Sayed has said that, that he doesn't believe they should be a Jewish state. That's concerning."

"No, it's more than concerning. It's wrong," Pelosi said. "It's wrong, and it isn't a reflection of the Democrats in the Congress of the United States. This new person in Michigan, we'll see if he gets elected to the Congress, but the mayor, bless his heart, I hope he succeeds as mayor, but I don't agree with some of the things he has said."

What Mamdani and El-Sayed actually said

Deutsch's summary was fair. On ABC's This Week on June 28, Jonathan Karl asked New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani whether he supports Israel as a Jewish state. "I believe that any state that privileges one religion over the other is one that I can't tell you I support, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else," Mamdani said, according to the mayor's own office transcript.

El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan's open Senate seat, was asked the same thing by a supporter at a "Jews for Abdul" event in Pontiac on May 20. "I often struggle with the question that people ask in this particular scenario," he said in a recording obtained by Jewish Insider. He said he needs people who ask it to explain "how that is consistent with any form of liberal values that we say we believe in here in the United States."

And at the Oct. 8 debate with Republican Mike Rogers, WOOD TV8's Rick Albin asked El-Sayed again and again whether Israel or Iran is the bigger threat to America. "That's, again, a ridiculous question," El-Sayed said. "I think both of them have proven dangerous in their own way." Asked if he would vote to arm Israel after an attack by Iran, he said no.

The hole in her answer

Pelosi's two answers do not fit together. If saying Israel has no right to be a Jewish state is antisemitic, as Deutsch put it, and Pelosi agreed that position is "wrong," then she does know of somebody on her side. She just named two of them, with his help: the Democratic mayor of America's biggest city and the Democratic nominee in one of the most important Senate races in the country.

She also tried to wall the problem off. Mamdani is a mayor, not a member of Congress, and El-Sayed is not elected yet, so in her telling the House Democrats are clean. "If somebody says that, the other members disassociate themselves from it," she said.

Deutsch did not let that one go either. "You have members coming in who are going to win in New York," he said. "There are a few of them." That looked like a reference to the democratic socialist House candidates Mamdani backed, who swept their New York primaries in June.

Pelosi's final word was about winning. "We have to win big," she said. "People represent their districts, and we have to respect that."

Why it matters

Think of a party's leaders as the referees of its own team. When a referee says she sees no fouls, then calls two fouls in the next minute, the players learn the rules will bend if the score is good enough.

That is the choice in front of Michigan voters on Tuesday. El-Sayed leads Rogers in some polls, and his campaign has already drawn scrutiny we have covered, from his father's charity and Saddam-era Iraq to the accounts boosting him on X. Now the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House has called his view on Israel "wrong," and then said only, "we'll see if he gets elected."