Michigan AG Dana Nessel smears Rep. Rashida Tlaib as anti-Semite for something Tlaib never actually said

In this clear case of propaganda, CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash provide Nessel an assist, extending this false story for days

Of the student encampments that demonstrators erected this year, one was done so at the University of Michigan. Other campuses, like those of Columbia University, New York University, the University of Texas, and UCLA, received far attention, but I kept my peripheral vision open for what was occurring on U of M’s campus. Not only is it local to me (born and raised in Michigan), U of M has a storied history of student protest, and Ann Arbor itself has a reasonable police force with good town-gown relations. That’s one of the reasons it was so shocking when campus and city police responded to the U of M student encampment with the same egregious level of force as witnessed on other campuses nationwide.

Anti-war encampment at University of Michigan in full swing, May 2024.

The police moved in and destroyed the encampment in May.

Police in full riot gear file onto the University of Michigan’s Diag in preparation of dismantling the anti-war encampment, May 21, 2024.

Over the course of months, prosecutors in Washtenaw County, where U of M is located, weighed a decision and ultimately declined to press charges against eleven people (though they planned to move forward with charges against four others). It was at this point that the Michigan Attorney General’s office, headed by Dana Nessel, stepped in to bring charges against the eleven.

This move was highly unusual, and it attracted criticism. One of those critics was Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, who tweeted that the decision to pursue these charges was shameful and violated these students’ rights. She called on Nessel to “[f]ollow the Constitution.”

Tlaib also sat down for an interview with a local newspaper, the Detroit Metro Times (DMT), where she delineated the discrepancy that seemed quite apparent: protests for any number of causes, including those for racial justice, for environmental concerns, for voicing opposition to water shutoffs in the city of Detroit and more, Dana Nessel’s office had not brought charges against those participants. That she chose to do so in this instance reveals perhaps an institutional bias that deserves scrutiny. Tlaib spoke of “biases within the agency” and speculated that U of M administrators may have pressured Nessel’s office after Washtenaw County prosecutors declined to take action.

The interview as it was originally described by the Detroit Metro Times. Screenshot taken from The Rational National, “CNN Caught Fabricating Quote to Smear Rashida Tlaib & Criticize Gov. Whitmer,” September 24, 2024.

Not long after this, a cartoonist for the Detroit News, Henry Payne, decided to lampoon Tlaib in a sketch that alluded to the unprecedented pager attack by the state of Israel that injured thousands and killed twelve, including two children. The cartoon (which I am choosing not to display) depicted Tlaib at her desk with a crumpled, smoking device on the desk’s left hand corner, a thought bubble above Tlaib reading, “Odd … my pager just exploded.” This cartoon was widely condemned as racist and as furthering stereotypes, implying that the sole Palestinian-American representative in the House was a terrorist. Tlaib garnered sympathy across the political spectrum, as many were outraged by the depiction.

That same day, the very day that this cartoon was published and people were coming to Tlaib’s defense, Dana Nessel decided to insert herself into the story. This was a full week after DMT had published its interview with Tlaib. (For a thorough timeline, please check Prem Thakker’s article at Zeteo, “Anatomy of a Smear Campaign Against Rashida Tlaib.”)

Just as the cartoon was Islamophobic and wrong, Nessel tweeted, so too was Tlaib’s assertion that Nessel’s religion made her incapable of carrying out her duties — that’s anti-Semitic and wrong.

Nowhere in the DMT interview did Tlaib mention Nessel’s background or even Judaism more generally. What Nessel wrote was clearly her interpretation of what Rashida Tlaib meant, but in no way was that close to what Tlaib actually said.

Detroit Metro Times revised their copy slightly after the original composition had been taken out of context by media outlets and politicians.

This story probably would have died on the vine had not Jake Tapper picked it up and used it as an ambush in his live segment with Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, who appeared on Tapper’s State of the Union show Sunday. 

Tapper: Your state’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, charged almost a dozen individuals from the University of Michigan over the anti-Israel protests. Among the charges: attempted ethnic intimidation, assaulting or obstructing a police officer, and on and on. These are pro-Palestinian protesters who are being punished and prosecuted. Michigan Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian, she called the charges from Nessel, who is Jewish, “shameful,” and Tlaib said, “It seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.” Nessel responded by saying, “Rashida Tlaib should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as Attorney General. It’s anti-Semitic and wrong.” Do you think that Tlaib’s suggestion that Nessel’s office is biased was anti-Semitic?

Gov. Whitmer: Listen, Jake, you know what? All I can say is that I know that our Jewish community is in pain, as is our Palestinian and Muslim and Arab communities in Michigan. I know that seeing the incredible toll that this war has taken on both communities has been really, really challenging and difficult, and my heart breaks for so many. But, as governor, my job is to make sure that both these communities are protected and respected under the law in Michigan, and that’s exactly what I’m going to stay focused on.

Whitmer responded like a politician, and I actually don’t blame her for her reaction in the moment. Had Tapper, a veteran CNN anchor, been a respectful host, he would have accepted her first answer, which emphasized the fact that Michigan has many constituencies and that it’s the governor’s job to ensure all feel “protected and respected.” Tapper, however, was not satisfied with this answer, and it is here that Tapper commits what some might call a journalistic sin. He makes up a quote and attributes it to Rashida Tlaib — just manufactures it out of whole cloth.

Tapper: But do you think attorney general Nessel is not doing her job? Because Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she shouldn’t be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law and that she’s only doing it because she’s Jewish, and the protesters are not. That’s quite an accusation. Do you think it’s true?

Gov. Whitmer: Like I said, Jake, I’m not going to get in the middle of this argument that they’re having. I can just say this: we do want to make sure that students are safe on our campuses, and we recognize every person has the right to make their statement about how they feel about an issue, a right to speak out. And I’m going to use every lever of mine to make sure that both are true.

Not to be outdone, Dana Bash took Tapper’s exchange with Whitmer and used it as a springboard for her own segment, wherein she excoriated Whitmer for not condemning Tlaib’s statement — which Bash completely and entirely misrepresented. Unlike her colleague Tapper, who at least presented a partial excerpt of Tlaib’s Metro Times interview on-screen so viewers at home could read it, Bash merely played the tape where Tapper put words in Tlaib’s mouth. Bash then used this to bothsides the Democratic and Republican parties, taking this instance and one involving Donald Trump to illustrate her own claim that anti-Semitism is present on “both ends of the political spectrum.”

Bash: And now to a sad reality, and that is anti-Semitism is everywhere. And it comes from both ends of the political spectrum. But politicians sometimes sidestep calling it out when it comes from a member of their own party. We saw two examples on State of the Union yesterday: first with Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, when my co-anchor, Jake Tapper, asked about a Democratic congresswoman’s accusation that the state’s Jewish attorney general was letting her religion influence her job. [...] And then there was this exchange with Republican Senator Tom Cotton [Jake Tapper asks Cotton about Donald Trump’s comment that Jewish voters would be to blame if he loses the election; Tapper makes sure to assert that anti-Semitism “is on both the left and the right”].

That last bit — the idea that anti-Semitism is a deep-seated, pernicious problem on the left — is dogma amongst some. It’s the underlying yet unsubstantiated charge comprising the concept of the “new anti-Semitism.” Leftists in the ’60s criticized the state of Israel heavily after Israel occupied territory in Gaza and the West Bank after the War of 1967, and since then right-wing ideologues committed to the Zionist movement have characterized this left-wing critique as “anti-Semitic.” But, other than criticism lodged against the policy of a nation-state, it was never clear what, exactly, could be construed as anti-Semitic. The development of what constitutes the “new anti-Semitism” has undergone many permutations over the last fifty years, but it began as a reaction against those who had the temerity to criticize Israel for its illegal and draconian move to oppress Palestinians in their own land after Israel’s whirlwind (and intoxicating) victory in ’67.

This dogma — this article of faith — now has become entrenched, thanks in no small part to the state of Israel itself, as it has nurtured think tanks and academic departments devoted to the notion of the “new anti-Semitism” and has pushed for a definition of anti-Semitism that essentially considers criticism of Israel as inherently anti-Semitic. It’s not questioned. It’s simply assumed that the left is “a hotbed for anti-Semitism,” even though this has never been shown — not to any significant degree once criticism of a government and state is factored out of the analysis.

It is this assumption that undergirded the histrionic coverage of the student protests throughout the entire mainstream media corridor this past spring, and it’s the same assumption that gave rise to the entire structure of Dana Bash’s segment about the Nessel/Tlaib affair. Indeed, Bash brought on another CNN colleague, David Chalian, who proceeded to use the student protests themselves as purported examples of anti-Semitism on the left, saying that the insidious bigotry was “coursing” through those demonstrations.

By the time Dana Bash platformed this anti-Semitism-on-the-left-as-well-as-the-right segment, the author of the DMT piece, Steve Neavling, was furiously trying to get these erstwhile journalists to correct their reporting. “Rashida Tlaib never said that Nessel did this because she’s Jewish. Never. Stop spreading lies.” Neavling took the extraordinary step of penning a fresh article specifically to fact-check the falsehoods being spread: “Fact-check: Tlaib did not say Nessel charged pro-Palestinian protesters because she’s Jewish” (Detroit Metro Times, September 23, 2024).

Neavling, when asked by The Status Coup’s Jordan Chariton whether any of these news outlets had reached out to him for verification or clarification of this story, said, “No, not at all.”

Indeed, Neavling wanted to stress that the bias to which Rep. Tlaib referred was an anti-Palestinian bias, one that exists in many U.S. institutions (most of which are not headed by those who happen to be Jewish).

This is unconscionable. CNN violated almost all tenets of journalism by airing this rumor and stating it as fact. Not only that, but it continued to propagate the claim, even after it had been informed that its journalists were 100% wrong.

Tapper and Bash each took time to “clarify” their statements. In both instances, rather than issuing a retraction and offering apologies to the viewing audience and to Tlaib herself, the TV personalities dug even deeper into falsity. Tapper, instead of bringing on Neavling to discuss the DMT piece that kicked off this rumorfest, booked Dana Nessel, the very person who mischaracterized this from the first.

Nessel, taking the opportunity, re-entrenched her position, which served to cement the impression in the viewers’ minds of Tlaib’s supposed bigotry.

Tapper: I should note that I misspoke yesterday when asking a follow-up of Governor Whitmer, who I asked about this. I was trying to characterize your views of Tlaib’s comments. What do you make of those today, noting that Congresswoman Tlaib never explicitly said that your bias was because of your religion and so it’s unfair for you to make that allegation?

Nessel: Well, a couple of things. First of all, in 2022, when my opponent accused me of being a groomer and a pedophile, everyone understood that those were homophobic remarks, because I happen to be gay. Right? I didn’t have to explain it to people. Rashida Tlaib is an individual who is well-known for making inflammatory and incendiary remarks that are anti-Semitic in nature, so this isn’t the first time that we would have heard these words out of her mouth. I think it’s very clear to everybody exactly what she was saying.

This interview solidifies Nessel’s intent: given the chance to retract and correct the record, she elected to extend the smear campaign against Tlaib. That speaks volumes to Nessel’s character.

Bash, for her part, began her next televised segment with a pseudo-retraction, but she ended it with Nessel’s reiteration of the original mischaracterization. This in itself reinforced the spurious claim and, in fact, further defamed Tlaib as a function of this framing.

Bash: A clarification on a story we brought you yesterday concerning Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s comments attacking a decision by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to bring charges against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan. Tlaib accused Nessel of “biases.” Here’s Tlaib’s full quote to the Detroit Metro Times: “It seems that the Attorney General decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.” Now, Tlaib did not reference Nessel’s Jewish identity. Her office has not responded to our requests for clarity. Her allies insist that’s not what she meant, but Nessel still says she believes it is anti-Semitic and repeated on CNN yesterday that “clearly she’s referencing my religion.”

Dana Bash should be fired. Jake Tapper, too, should be, if not fired, put on a lengthy suspension. They not only damaged their own credibility and the credibility of CNN, they have provided the platform for hate and vitriol to be directed at the only Palestinian-American in Congress, someone already the recipient of racist insults and death threats. 

Lost in all of this is the fate of the eleven people who have been charged by Dana Nessel’s office, when Nessel has never charged protesters in any other circumstance.