Tamika Mallory, co-president of the controversial Women's March Inc., attempted to explain her ties to and praise of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan Monday while appearing on “The View.”
Mallory once posted a photo of herself with Farrakhan on Instagram that called him “the GOAT,” or “Greatest of All Time.” She also attended the Nation of Islam's Saviours' Day event last February, along with other Women’s March Inc. founding members, where Farrakhan said Jewish people are "responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men.”
“I didn’t call him the Greatest of All Time because of his rhetoric,” Mallory explained on “The View. “I called him the Greatest of All Time because of what he’s done in black communities.”
The talk show’s co-host Meghan McCain shot back, “I would never be comfortable supporting someone who called, ‘I’m not an anti-Semite, I’m an anti-termite,’ ‘It’s the wicked Jews, the false Jews that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality,’” citing other statements attributed to Farrakhan.
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McCain also brought up a recent piece by Jewish online magazine Tablet that claims that Mallory and another Women’s March Inc. founder Carmen Perez “asserted that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people — and...claimed that Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade.”
McCain added, “Now a lot of people think that you’re using your organization as anti-Semitism masked in activism and that you’re using identity politics to shield yourself from critiques.”
Women’s March Inc. co-president Bob Bland, who also appeared on “The View,” responded that the allegations in Tablet were “not true,” and that “The people that the journalist spoke to did not tell the truth. And I think it’s important for us to understand, and I’ll be very clear in this room, that the women’s march unequivocally condemns anti-Semitism, bigotry.”
Mallory said, “We did not make those remarks. I don’t agree with many of Mr. Farrakhan’s statements.”
When McCain asked why she wouldn’t outright condemn Farrakhan’s statments, Mallory replied, “I should never be judged through the lens of a man.”