Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rebuked New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Thursday over their positions on Israel, calling their views “wrong” and saying they do not represent congressional Democrats.
“On Brand” podcast host Donny Deutsch raised the two progressive Democrats during a discussion with Pelosi, asking how he could continue supporting the Democratic Party as a Jewish man while some of its politicians make statements he viewed as antisemitic.
“When you say Israel doesn’t have the right to be a Jewish state, that’s antisemitic as far as I’m concerned with all that,” Deutsch said.
After Pelosi asked him to identify specific examples, Deutsch pointed to Mamdani and El-Sayed, describing their comments as “concerning.”
“No, it’s more than concerning,” Pelosi replied. “It’s wrong. 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. But in terms of our people in the House of Representatives, if somebody says that, the other members disassociate themselves from it.”
Mamdani repeatedly avoided directly answering whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state before winning the New York City mayoral election. In a June 28 interview with ABC News, he said he supported Israel’s existence as a state offering equal rights but stopped short of endorsing it as a Jewish state.
“I think 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.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, has also repeatedly declined to affirm that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state.
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During a May appearance with Jewish supporters, El-Sayed said he had “struggled” with the question and argued that the concept of a Jewish state appeared inconsistent with the liberal values “we say we believe in here in the United States.”
Earlier in the conversation, Pelosi initially rejected the suggestion that antisemitism existed within the Democratic Party.
“The fact is that I really do not know of anybody there on our side who is engaged in antisemitism. That may be what it appears to be or what they’re 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,” Pelosi said.
Although Pelosi expressed reservations about Mamdani and El-Sayed’s remarks, she said their positions should not be viewed as representative of the party as a whole.
“People represent their districts, and we have to respect that. The job description, job title is representative, but that doesn’t mean it has an impact on the consensus of the Democratic Party, and [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries has been very clear on that,” Pelosi said.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, described Pelosi as “one of the Jewish community’s best friends among House Democrats” but said it was troubling that she appeared not to recognize antisemitism among some of her colleagues.
“Pelosi claims she wants for those voices to be marginalized within her party, yet she demonstrates that she has turned a deaf ear, both to antisemitic expression from her colleagues and to the rabbis anxious to set her straight on the magnitude of the problem,” Menken told Fox News Digital.
“If she is indeed one of our best friends, should we not be scared by that?”
