Right-wing commentator Ann Coulter has come under fire after posting a series of offensive tweets deemed by many to be anti-Semitic.
Coulter was reacting to Wednesday night’s Republican debate at California’s Ronald Reagan Library, during which she was apparently angered over candidates’ outspoken support for the State of Israel.
She was particularly incensed by the answers given by GOP candidates Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio and Chris Christie, for mentioning Israel when asked “What will AMERICA [emphasis hers] look like after you are president.”
“How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?” Coulter then asked, before musing that perhaps the candidates were trying “to suck up to the Evangelicals.”
Coulter, who is a high-profile supporter of candidate Donald Trump, also sarcastically suggested Huckabee was “running for PM of Israel.”
The tweets set off a firestorm of criticism, with countless people branding her anti-Semitic, while others alternately defended her and hurled rather more direct anti-Semitic abuse at her critics.
Some supporters began the hashtag #IStandWithAnn, which is currently trending on Twitter, with large numbers of primarily anti-Semitic comments by a variety of neo-Nazis and White Supremacists.
Coulter later sought to defend herself by saying she likes “the Jews,” but refused to take back her earlier tweets.
It is not the first time Coulter has come under fire for offensive comments about Jews.
In a 2007 interview on CNBC, she told host Donny Deutsch, who is Jewish, that she wanted everyone in the US to become Christian, and that Jews needed to accept Christianity to be “perfected.”
When asked sarcastically if she meant Jews “should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians then?” Coulter responded “Yeah… we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.”
