Member Of D.C. City Council Blames Recent Snowstorms On Jewish Bankers

A D.C. lawmaker latches on to an insane conspiracy theory.

A member of Washington D.C.’s City Council is blaming a recent brief snowstorm on Jewish bankers:

A D.C. lawmaker responded to a brief snowfall Friday by publishing a video in which he espoused a conspiracy theory that Jewish financiers control the weather.

D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) posted the video to his official Facebook page at 7:21 a.m. as snow flurries were hitting the nation’s capital. The video, shot through the windshield of a car driving west on Interstate 695 through downtown Washington, shows snowy skies while White narrates.

“Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” he says. “And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.”

The Rothschilds are a famous European business dynasty descended from Mayer Amschel Rothschild, an 18th-century Jewish banker who lived in what is today Frankfurt, Germany. The family has repeatedly been subject over the years to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories alleging that they and other Jews clandestinely manipulate world events for their advantage’

Rabbi Daniel Zemel of Temple Micah in Northwest Washington denounced White’s remarks, saying they contribute to a growing mood of intolerance in the United States.

“This kind of anti-Semitism is unacceptable in any public official. This so diminishes what America is about and adds to the oppressive feeling going on in the country right now,” Zemel said. “We all have to be better. Public officials have to learn not to say the first ignorant thing that comes into their head.”

The Anti-Defamation League reported last month that ­anti-Semitic incidents in the District more than doubled in 2017, compared with 2015. That follows a similar escalation nationwide.

White did not return calls for comment. In a series of text messages, he confirmed the voice in the video is his but expressed surprise that his remarks might be construed as anti-Semitic. Asked to clarify what he meant, he wrote, “The video says what it says.”

White later apologized for his comments:

“I work hard everyday to combat racism and prejudices of all kinds. I want to apologize to the Jewish Community and anyone I have offended,” he said. “The Jewish community have been allies with me in my journey to help people. I did not intend to be anti-Semitic, and I see I should not have said that after learning from my colleagues.”

White said his “friends” at Jews United for Justice, a group that advocates for progressive causes and endorsed him in 2016, were “helping me to understand the history of comments made against Jews and I am committed to figuring out ways continue to be allies with them and others.”

D.C. Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1), who is Jewish, released a statement Sunday night saying White had apologized and “expressed his sincere regret . . . for having offended members of the Jewish community.”

She added: “It is my sincere hope that my colleague has learned from this experience, and that together we can serve the diverse people of the District of Columbia with a focus on lifting each other up, rather than tearing one another down.”

White’s video statements appear to echo beliefs, found lurking in corners of the Internet, that the Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient Cities initiative — which provides grants to cities, including the District, to address environmental and economic problems — is actually part of a secret scheme to control and reduce the population of North America.

Some conspiracy theorists also think the Rothschilds, acting in conjunction with the Rockefeller family, have technology to manipulate the weather — for example, by causing freak storms that wreak havoc on people, farms and livestock.

Given the fact that this is the District of Columbia we’re talking about here, and that White is representing the same Ward of the city that Marion Barry was elected to even after his conviction on Federal drug charges and prison time, it’s hardly surprising to see some crazy nonsense coming out of his mouth. That being said, though, one does have to wonder what exactly is in the water over the 8th Ward that leads to someone like this representing its people on the City Council of the nation’s capital.

 

FILED UNDER: Science & Technology, US Politics, , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Scott O says:

    Both sides!

    4
  2. Franklin says:

    I’m not sure where people get this stuff, but the guy sounds like a pure ignoramus. I might even believe him when he claims he didn’t know this was anti-Semitic.

    3
  3. Mu says:

    Didn’t mention HAARP or chemtrails. Piker.

    6
  4. JohnMcC says:

    Well, I’ll be the contrarian, then. It really does seem possible for a reasonably intelligent person to have a sense of a cabal of foreign-sounding financial world masters doing threatening things and have the name ‘Rothschilds’ attached to them but not have an inkling of the anti-Semitic background of that story. I once read a freshman world history book that described the Dreyfus affair in such a way that one had to puzzle out the fact that Dreyfus was a Jew.

    Facebook must be a place you can really appear as ignorant as you hope you aren’t. Glad I don’t subscribe or whatever one does sense I have a talent for that.

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  5. MarkedMan says:

    A cogent reminder that idiocy isn’t limited to those in the Fox News bubble.

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  6. al-Ameda says:

    “Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” he says. “And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.”

    Timeless bullsh**. Anti-semitism will always be with us.
    There are always a lot of people – in this country, Europe, Russia and Central Asia – susceptible and willing to buy in to age-old conspiracies about Jewish bankers, financiers, industrialists, landlords and on-and-on-and-on.

    2
  7. KM says:

    *sigh* Conspiracy theorists….

    My fav way to taunt them is to ask why they think this technology exists and nobody’s monetized it yet? Hey, want good weather for your parade? $10 million. Want to keep tourists around for another month? 70% of the profits. Want to grow wine anywhere in England again? Sell the Crown Jewels, it’s gonna cost you. The blank looks I get when they realize “greedy bankers” aren’t exploiting tech to make money is delicious – you can see the hamster falling off the wheel 🙂

    8
  8. Kylopod says:

    This is a great example of Poe’s Law. Borat once claimed that Jews killed the dinosaurs.

    1
  9. Gustopher says:

    This poor man. He was obviously referring to the Rothschild Giraffes, not the Rothschild family themselves, and now the overly sensitive SJW are pillorying him for his lack of precision. Everyone knows that it’s the giraffes that have the weather control technology.

    The Rothschild family, however, is so rich, powerful and Jewish that they had a species of giraffe named after them, leading to this type of confusion.

    3
  10. Franklin says:

    @Gustopher: Who’s missing Paul Hooson and the Caption Contests right now?

  11. ptfe says:

    NOAA’s satellite operations facility is in a federal complex about 1/4 of a mile out of DC, right next to……….Ward f’in 8. Think about it.

    Weather satellites? More like weather CONTROL satellites!

  12. Monala says:

    That being said, though, one does have to wonder what exactly is in the water over the 8th Ward that leads to someone like this representing its people on the City Council of the nation’s capital.

    Stuff like this is said by white Republican politicians all the time, and now we hear it from a black Democrat. This is not to excuse his comments at all, but there is no need to insult the people of his district when these kinds of comments are being made all over the country.

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  13. Mister Bluster says:

    Stuff like this is said by white Republican politicians all the time,..

    Meet Representative John Shimkus (R-IL)
    Rep. John Shimkus is standing by a controversial comment that global warming isn’t something to worry about because God said he wouldn’t destroy the Earth after Noah’s flood.

  14. Facebones says:

    That’s just stupid. Everyone knows that Cobra Commander controls the weather machine.

    2
  15. Monala says:

    @Mister Bluster: That’s another difference. Councilor White gave what seems to be a genuine apology with intent to do better.

    1
  16. MarkedMan says:

    @KM:

    My fav way to taunt them is to ask why

    I’ve tried a similar tack with UFO nuts. “So you’re telling me that the US Government has known about benevolent aliens since the 1940’s but they are covering it up?”, “Yup”, “So all those Presidents decided that no, they didn’t want to be the one that goes on world wide television and makes the announcement that we know there is other life in the galaxy, an announcement that would be played and replayed for centuries, making them one of the most famous people ever to have existed?”

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  17. Mister Bluster says:

    For those who claim that outer space aliens exist among us all I ask is “Bring me one.”

  18. MarkedMan says:

    @Mister Bluster: I guess we could also point out that 25 years ago or so people were stumbling upon various aliens, Big foot, Loch Ness Monsters, etc at a fairly good clip. But now that virtually everyone is carrying around a high resolution camera at all times, these encounters seem to be happening much farther away. Quite the coincidence, that. (Hat tip to XKCD)

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  19. Kylopod says:
  20. Gustopher says:

    @Monala:

    Councilor White gave what seems to be a genuine apology with intent to do better.

    Councilor White did not mean to reference anti-Semitic theories when he was making insane and ridiculous claims about people controlling the weather. He certainly didn’t mean to imply that all Jews control the weather, or even that the only people who can control the weather are Jews.

    Also, Councilor White would like everyone to know that if the weather was nice next weekend, he would consider it a mitzve.

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  21. Mark says:

    @Franklin:
    “Anti-Semitic” is a LOADED term – likely coined by Zionists to deflect legitimate criticism of SATANIC Zionism – not to be confused with YOU OUGHT TO KNOW BETTER Zionists or the Machiavellian Zionists within the body politic. Noah had three sons: Yaphath, Ham & Shem, Abraham was of the blood line of Shem and he begot both Ishmael and later Isaac. The bloodline of Christ came through Isaac and then Jacob who later took the name Israel.
    Semite, then means OF THE LINEAGE OF SHEM – and that includes Arabs and thus further includes Palestinians which further includes Palestinian CHRISTIANS.
    As a SLANDER TERM “Anti-Semite” dismisses LEGITIMATE CRITICISM of those of us that agree with Jews of good conscience that are slandered as “Self-Hating Jews”. Repeatedly the book of Judges tells of “the children of Israel did evil in the sight of God” SEVEN TIMES – and about as many times subsequently in the Old Testament. God will judge all people as individuals – and this generation of Jews are not to be blamed for killing Christ in keeping with Ezekiel 18:20. Yet there is legitimate concern that MOST modern Jews persist in rejecting the Messiah thus Christ has in turn rejected them. Twisting Genesis 12 into calling impunity and duplicity a “Blessing” is just flat out wrong! Modern Jews are for the most part not of the lineage of Abraham – nor Shem – read Genesis 10:3 as to where the term Ashkenazi comes from. These people are as Yaphitic as I am, but then I do not make bogus claims about my ancestry. About 740 AD the kingdom of Khazaria “converted” to a corruption of Judaism debased by Talmudism. This was based on a top down decree, not any kind of religious movement.

    The bottom line is that most Jews are not Semitic – Arabs including Palestinian Christians ARE Semitic and this kind of deception is what one is to expect of the Synagogue of Satan – as Christ Himself called them in Revelation 2:9 & 3:9.